The Weird Get Weirder and the Mysteries Abide Summer might be ...

2026-10-17T02:44:26Z

The Weird Get Weirder and the Mysteries Abide

Summer might be over, but weirdness is forever. Here’s an update on my weird detectives summer reading project with more weird detectives and weird investigations and some spooky season weird movies, too.
Burchfield, Charles Ephraim, 1893-1967. House of Mystery. 1924. Art Institute of Chicago. https://jstor.org/stable/community.14628617.
The Original Weird Detectives List
Removals and Substitutions
I haven’t read most of the novels and stories I’m adding to the weird investigations list, and some of them I’d never heard of before making the list for this reading project. Also, I’m trying not to read too much about them before I actually read them, so I’m running into situations where I thought a story would be a good candidate and then it turns out it’s just weird and not a weird investigation.
Weird is still good, though. I’m a huge fan of Aickman’s and I’ll still read “Ringing the Changes” at some point, but for now I’ve removed it from the list. I also substituted “The Oval Lady” for “The Debutante” after I started reading Carrington’s The Complete Stories and realized that “The Debutante” has no element of investigation.
To Be Read
All of the books in the to be read and read lists are linked to where you can buy them at Bookshop.org in my original post!
Robert Aickman – “Ringing the Changes” (Dark Entries)
P. Djèlí Clark – The Haunting of Tram Car 015
Victor LaValle – The Ballad of Black Tom
Jonathan Lethem – Gun, with Occasional Music
Jeff Noon – A Man of Shadows
Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49
Alain Robbe‑Grillet – The Erasers
Sofia Samatar – “A Brief History of Nonduality Studies” (Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond)
Leonardo Sciascia - Equal Danger
Read
I enjoyed all of these. My favorite of the novels and novellas so far has been City of Glass, although I also really liked Dora Bruder.
Of the short stories, Barron’s “Bulldozer” was a favorite. It was surprising because I knew it was a cosmic horror story, but I didn’t realize that it was also a weird Western with a villain for a protagonist.
Carrington’s short stories have also been delightful. I’ve read about half of The Complete Stories and so far they’re all deeply surreal, usually disturbing and dark, and they show very little concern for adhering to any particular idea of how a short story typically works.
Paul Auster – City of Glass
Laird Barron – “Bulldozer” (The Imago Sequence and Other Stories)
Jorge Luis Borges – “The Garden of Forking Paths” (Labyrinths)
Leonora Carrington – “The Debutante” (The Complete Stories)
Leonora Carrington - “The Oval Lady” (The Complete Stories)
Sara Gran - Little Mysteries
Kelly Link – “The Faery Handbag” (Magic for Beginners)
Patrick Modiano - Dora Bruder
Vladimir Nabokov – The Eye
More Weird Investigations
I’m adding to my reading project with more stories and novels featuring weird detectives and weird investigations. The links here are mostly either to a WorldCat record or Project Gutenberg. (I still love Bookshop.org, though. Please buy your books through them if you can. It helps support independent bookstores.)
Stories & Story collections
Felipe Alfau - Locos: A Comedy of Gestures
“In Locos, Felipe Alfau creates a mercurial dreamscape in which the characters—the eccentric, sometimes criminal, habitues of Toledo's Cafe of the Crazy—wrench free of authorial control, invade one another's stories, and even turn into one another.” (Description from Bookshop.org, as WorldCat had no summary)
Margaret Atwood - “Murder in the Dark” (Murder in the Dark: Short Fictions and Prose Poems)
“Murder in the Dark is Margaret Atwood's seventh work of fiction or her tenth work of poetry, depending on how you slice it. These short prose forms range from fictionalized autobiography through parable through prose-poetry, mini-romance and mini-science fiction. While Murder in the Dark is accessible and entertaining, it is also experimental, an out-of-the-ordinary sampling. Includes 'Making Poison,' 'Women's Novels,' 'Liking Men' and many more…” (WorldCat summary)
Algernon Blackwood - Three John Silence Stories
“This volume features the eccentric Dr. John Silence, a psychic doctor with an extraordinary understanding of the human spirit and its afflictions. The stories delve into the realms of the unknown and the occurrences of psychical invasions, exploring how Dr. Silence employs his unique talents to help those afflicted by unexplainable phenomena.” (Project Gutenberg description)
Jorge Luis Borges
“Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth” (The Aleph and Other Stories)
“Dazzling and unmistakable in style, resonant in meaning, Jorge Luis Borges' 'The Aleph and Other Stories' contains the best of Borges' fiction. Included also is a lengthy autobiographical essay written especially for this volume. The twenty stories in this book cover the whole span and all the various facets of Borges' forty-year career as a short story writer. The collection is the most definitive and comprehensive available in English.” —Jacket (via WorldCat)
“The Shape of the Sword” (Labyrinths)
“Forty short stories and essays have been selected as representative of the Argentine writer's metaphysical narratives.” (WorldCat summary)
William Hope Hodgson - Carnacki, The Ghost Finder
“The work features Thomas Carnacki, an occult detective who investigates unusual hauntings using scientific methods, photography, and his fictional invention, the Electric Pentacle. Inspired by Sherlock Holmes, each story follows Carnacki as he recounts his latest case to close friends.” (Project Gutenberg description)
Stephen King - “Umney's Last Case” (Nightmares & Dreamscapes)
“It’s just another ordinary day in 1930s Los Angeles for private investigator Clyde Umney, until a new client walks into his office. Umney soon learns that his client is the crime-fiction writer who not only created him, but now needs to switch places with him. An unknown power forces Umney to take on the writer’s identity in the year 1994. Now, Clyde needs to figure out how to get back to his own universe and then take revenge on his creator.” (Description from StephenKing.com)
Sheridan Le Fanu - In A Glass Darkly (Project Gutenberg has three volumes of these stories)
“Presented as case files from occult detective Dr. Martin Hesselius, these five Gothic tales explore psychological terror and supernatural mysteries.” (Project Gutenberg description)
Nancy Novik, “How Does He Die This Time?”
The author read this story for the Ellery Queen podcast, which is free to listen to here.
“The debut story, which appears in EQMM’s current issue, takes us into the life of a new writer who enjoys success, but at a cost.” (EQMM podcast description)
Sax Rohmer - The Dream Detective
“A collection of detective stories written in the early 20th century. It follows the eccentric, occult-leaning sleuth Moris Klaw and his sharp-witted daughter Isis as they unravel uncanny crimes often tied to museums, relics, and legends, accompanied by a skeptical inspector and a journalist-biographer. Expect locked-room puzzles, exotic lore, and audacious disguises.” (Project Gutenberg description)
Ivan Vladislavic - 101 Detectives
“Ivan Vladislavic, author of Double Negative and The Restless Supermarket, invites readers to do some detective work of their own. Each story can be read as a story, but many hide clues and patterns. Whether skewering extreme marketing techniques or constructing dystopian parallel universes, Vladislavic will make you look beyond appearances.” (WorldCat summary)
Novels
Kobo Abe - The Box Man
“In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling madly on the interior walls of his box, he describes the world outside as he sees or perhaps imagines it, a tenuous reality that seems to include a mysterious rifleman determined to shoot him, a seductive young nurse, and a doctor who wants to become a box man himself. The Box Man is a marvel of sheer originality and a bizarrely fascinating fable about the very nature of identity.” (Description from Bookshop.org, as WorldCat had no summary)
Friedrich Durrenmatt - The Pledge
“A detective, unsatisfied with a suspect's confession to the murder of a little girl, tries to use another girl as bait to catch the killer.” (WorldCat summary)
Martin MacInnes, Infinite Ground
“During a sweltering South American summer, a family convenes for dinner at a restaurant. Midway through the meal, Carlos gets up from the table and disappears. An experienced, semi-retired detective takes the case, but what should be a routine investigation becomes something strange, intangible, even sinister. The corporation for which Carlos worked seems to serve no purpose; the staff talk of their missing colleague's alarming, shifting physical symptoms; a forensic scientist uncovers evidence of curious abnormalities in the thriving microorganisms that shared Carlos's body. As the detective re-lives and retraces the missing man's footsteps, the trail leads him away from the city sprawl and deep into the country's rainforest interior.” (Provided by the publisher, via WorldCat)
Matt Madden - Ex Libris (graphic novel)
“Ex Libris revolves around a character trapped in a room with nothing but a futon and a bookcase full of comics. As they peruse covers, read stories and fragments of stories, they begin to suspect that the comics contain hidden messages and... a threat. Fiction and reality blur; sanity and madness become increasingly intertwined as the reader becomes convinced the key to their predicament is to be found between the panels of the strange books.” (Description from Bookshop.org, as WorldCat had no summary)
Rereads & Puzzle Mysteries
Some of these don’t fit the weirdness requirement of weird detectives and weird investigations, but I feel like they still fit with the vibe of slightly off-beat detective stories.
Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose (reread)
“Italy, 1347. While Brother William of Baskerville is investigating accusations of heresy at a wealthy abbey, his inquiries are disrupted by a series of bizarre deaths. Turning his practiced detective skills to finding the killer, he relies on logic (Aristotle), theology (Thomas Aquinas), empirical insights (Roger Bacon), and his own wry humor and ferocious curiosity. With the aid of his young apprentice, William scours the abbey, from its stables to the labyrinthine library, piecing together evidence, and deciphering cryptic symbols and coded manuscripts to uncover the truth about this place where ‘the most interesting things happen at night.’” (Description from Bookshop.org, as WorldCat had no summary)
Foucault's Pendulum (reread)
“Three editors conspire to devise a plan of their own about European history. As they feed all the information into their computer, they think it is a terrific joke--until people begin to mysteriously disappear.” (WorldCat summary)
Ellen Raskin - The Westing Game (reread)
“The mysterious death of an eccentric millionaire brings together an unlikely assortment of heirs who must uncover the circumstances of his death before they can claim their inheritance.” (WorldCat summary)
Roger Zelazny - A Night in the Lonesome October (reread)
“A bizarre tale of a gathering of historic and literary horror figures in nineteenth-century London to summon the Elder Gods back into the world.” (WorldCat summary)
Isaac Asimov - Tales of the Black Widowers
I haven’t read these, but it seems like they might be fair play mysteries with strong a puzzle element.
“This book is the first of six that describe mysteries solved by the Black Widowers, based on a literary dining club he belonged to known as the Trap Door Spiders. It collects twelve stories by Asimov, nine reprinted from mystery magazines and three previously unpublished, together with a general introduction, and an afterword following each story by the author. Each story involves the club members' knowledge of trivia.” (Description from Wikipedia.org)
Some Spooky-Scary-Creepy-Weird Movies for the Season
These are some old favorites of mine and a few that are new to me that I’m planning to watch.
Old Favorites
Suspiria (1977)
“An American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister amid a series of grisly murders.” (Description from imdb.com)
The Thing (1982)
“A research team in Antarctica is hunted by a shape-shifting alien that assumes the appearance of its victims.” (Description from imdb.com)
What Have You Done to Solange (1973)
“A teacher who is having an affair with one of his students is reluctant to present an alibi when his lover witnesses the first in a series of murders connected to their school.” (Description from imdb.com)
Don’t Look Now (1973)
“A married couple grieving the recent death of their young daughter are in Venice when they encounter two elderly sisters with a warning from beyond.” (Description from imdb.com)
Blood and Black Lace (1964)
“A masked, shadowy killer brutally murders the models of a scandalous fashion house in Rome.” (Description from imdb.com)
Cemetery Man (1994)
“A cemetery man must kill the dead a second time when they become zombies.” (Description from imdb.com)
Mandy (2018)
“The enchanted lives of a couple in a secluded forest are brutally shattered by a nightmarish hippie cult and their demon-biker henchmen, propelling a man into a spiraling, surreal rampage of vengeance.” (Description from imdb.com)
Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)
“In 1983, a young mute woman with psychic abilities is held captive within the Arboria Institute, a secluded futuristic facility run by a sinister doctor with an unraveling mind and a growing obsession with her.” (Description from imdb.com)
Color Out of Space (2019)
“A secluded farm is struck by a strange meteorite which has apocalyptic consequences for the family living there and possibly the world.” (Description from imdb.com)
And if you haven’t seen the adorable and charming Over the Garden Wall (2014), go see that first, probably.
“Somewhere, lost in the clouded annals of history, lies a place that few have seen. A mysterious place called The Unknown... Two Brothers, Wirt and Greg find themselves lost in the strange woods, adrift in a time. With the help of a shadowy Woodsmen and a foul-tempered bluebird named Beatrice, they travel through the foggy land in Hope of finding a way home.” (Description from imdb.com)
To Be Watched
Here are some movies on my to-be-watched list. I use Kanopy through my public library and I really love it. It has all kinds of wonderful movies that can be hard to find on other streaming platforms.
Carnival of Souls (1962)
“After a traumatic accident, a woman becomes drawn to a mysterious abandoned carnival.” (Description from imdb.com)
The Psychic (1977)
“A clairvoyant woman discovers a skeleton in a wall in her husband's house, and seeks to find the truth about what happened to the victim.” (Description from imdb.com)
Alphaville (1965)
“An agent wrecks the main computer on another planet.” (Description from imdb.com)
The Vourdalak (2023)
“Lost in a hostile forest, the Marquis d'Urfé, a noble emissary of the King of France, finds refuge in the home of a strange family.” (Description from imdb.com)
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The Weird Get Weirder and the Mysteries Abide Summer might be ...