July 15 2025: Catch-up! Best Crime Reads of 2025!

Welp, the plan had been to upload yesterday’s X Spaces Best Of chat with my co-host PJ Thomas of Orville Nation. He had a great chat about The Orville and The Outer Limits (1995). But, of course, X being its buggy best did not record the event. Again, I made sure to hit that RECORD option when I set up the Space but it still didn’t record.

Anyhoo, we’re headed back to Montreal on Saturday for another ten day stint. My mother is still at the convalescent home. Sort of. The hospital feels she has improved to the point that she can return home but my sister is still making arrangements for live-in caregivers. That and the fact that her new roommate is a cantankerous older man with an infectious stomach bug has seen mom spend her nights back at home with sis. But I’m assuming by the time we get there, it will all be worked out.

I leave you with a few more recommendations of the Best Crime Reads of 2025…

Command Performance by Jean Echenoz (English translation released in 2025)

A former flight attendant-turned-P.I. finds work as an enforcer for a political group. But when he is enlisted to assassinate the party leader, things really start to go downhill.

The Book of Secrets by Anna Mazzola (North American release)

The UK release was among my favorite Crime Reads of 2024. It’s North American release makes the 2025 list as well.

Serve, marry or steal. Those are the choices 20’s London offers young Eleanor Mackridge. She chooses the latter, joining a female crime gang with a taste for champagne, diamonds, and pilfering.

Hang on St. Christopher by Adrian McKinty

A carjacking gone wrong and the death of a solitary, middle-aged painter draw D.I. Sean Duffy into a case involving the CIA, MI5 and Special Branch.

There! All caught up!

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3 responses

Jane Woollestone

July 16, 2025 at 10:56 am

Fingers and toes crossed that your Mum is back at home full time really soon xxx

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Ponytail

July 17, 2025 at 1:11 am

Excellent your mom is about ready to go home! Good luck to Andria on finding live-in help. Getting a good person would be an answer to prayers. I was at a doctor’s appointment recently. We were talking about caring for elderly parents. He was talking about having someone living with his mom. He has installed cameras throughout her house. He can check in with them anytime day or night. I said ‘wow that is cool. Can you do it like, right now?’ He said YES!. See… And pulled up a camera view, on his phone, of her kitchen. Sure enough, his mom was sitting at the kitchen table with her caregiver. They were eating lunch. and chatting with each other. That was SO COOL! You and Andria could do that when she gets home and both of you have access to see and hear your mom all day and night. I believe you would even be able to talk to her (and the caregiver) thru the cameras.

A caregiver for my parents, who would be with them overnight. had cameras in her own home too. She had 5 kids at home and checked up on them while she was gone. She said to me, look…. and pulled up a view of the back yard patio. Her kids were playing out there. They were not in the view of the camera at that moment, but you could hear them talking and laughing with each other. She said she can talk to them too.

Amazing what these little cameras can do now!

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Line Noise

July 17, 2025 at 8:53 am

Too bad about the recording. I missed listening live so I’m bummed I won’t get to hear your thoughts about The Orville. PJ’s obviously a fan so I’m sure he would have advocated for it. The first season is a little rough because Fox wanted Family Guy In Space so that’s what Seth MacFarlane gave them even though he really wanted to do something more closely related to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Seth was able to dial back the crass humour and husband and wife squabbling for season 2. And then the move to Hulu gave him even more freedom to make the show he wanted.

I really like The Orville. Until Star Trek: Strange New Worlds came along, The Orville was the best Star Trek show on television! I’m hoping for a 4th season eventually.

This episode was pretty good. It asks all the right moral questions and, I think, arrives at the correct answers. In the established rules of this universe’s time travel the timeline where Gordon has a family still exists. There timelines split when Ed went back to rescue Gordon shortly after he arrived. Ed’s decision is initially shocking but when you think about the damage to the timeline that could have happened I think he did the right thing.

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I stopped following your The Outer Limits rewatch after a couple of episodes as I found the stories not very engaging and the longer runtime a drag. But I was interested to try the 1995 reboot. It was probably on TV here in Australia but I don’t remember watching it. The episode you chose was interesting. Robert Patrick and Nicole de Boer did a fantastic job with an obviously low budget. I also recognised familiar names in the writer and director. 🙂

I figured that one of them would be a spy pretty early on, most likely Bree. I still enjoyed the reveal when it came, although I think John revealing the human’s plans right at the end came out of nowhere. I realise he said it to give Bree some hope before he killed her but I didn’t get the impression that that was the sort of hope Bree was asking for. She didn’t really seem that interested in whether humanity would survive or not. Her descriptions of life on Earth sounded pretty demoralising.

Anyway, a good episode but I won’t be watching any more.

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Fingers crossed the recording works tomorrow because I have a busy morning and might not be able to tune in live and I really want to hear your thoughts on Red Dwarf.

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