Sunday e-mail 9th June

Travel, voices, jury trials...and much, much more!

Hello Crime & Psychology fans! Thank you, as ever, very much for subscribing. That goes double if you are new here. We’re delighted to have you on board. And, if you are one of the kind souls who has Pledged a few dollars to help keep the newsletter going, well, it goes triple for you. You’re an angel.

‘But Jason,’ (I know you’ll be thinking,) ‘while we love Crime & Psychology, what with all its informative newsletters, insightful Sunday e-mails, and brilliant bullet-lists, not to mention the absolutely-free Dictionary of Crime…somehow we cannot help feeling a little unfulfilled, as if, well, as if something were missing. Jason, we miss the sound of your voice!’

I utterly understand. Sadly, there has been no opportunity to record my famous voice-overs in recent weeks. I came down with a nasty case of bronchitis, and, let’s be honest, you didn’t want to hear me rasp and cough my way through the newsletters. Your relief to hear of my improvement will, I know, be infinite. I am steadily catching up on the recordings, but please bear with me. It takes a while but they will be back!

And there was a trial. For that reason, we shall be celebrating the start of summer with a pair of pandemonius publications on the psychology of that very topic. The first of a brace of brilliant newsletters about jury decision-making will enter your e-mail punctually at the usual time, Wednesday. It’s pulse-pounding action all the way. You simply cannot afford to miss it, Crime & Psychology fan. What else will you talk about with the cool kids at the water-cooler on Thursday?

Or think about maybe buying me a coffee! That’d be nice.

This week’s brilliant bullet-list features several riotous revelations, all more or less craftily coupled to crime yet simultaneously synched to Psych:

·       GRAFFITI Last week while I was in Rome (ahem) I was struck by the quantity of graffiti. It’s everywhere. I was also struck by the fact that most of it was in English. Anglophone artistes are apparently doing their own March on Rome, backpacks ajangle with spray-cans, or else something more sinister’s going on… And why - one can’t help but wonder - would anyone spray-paint a slogan like ‘End Genocide Now’? It’s not like I wandered past and thought, ‘Oh, OK, good idea, I’ll do that after lunch. Neither did anyone else.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

·       FILM Hollywood executives. Why do they never listen to me? I tell them and tell them. Furiosa – A Mad Max Story Without Mad Max In It – had the worst Memorial Day opening weekend for 43 years. You know why? Because it’s A Mad Max Story Without Mad Max In It, that’s why. I coulda predicted it and so could you.

·       JURY TRIALS There was some sort of trial recently. You may not have heard anything: the media kept very quiet. Whatever one’s opinions about the verdict, a person can’t help wondering whether it’s a good day for democracy when phrases like ‘banana republic’ get flung around so freely....

·       COMICS I decided to catch up with Batman. Are you behind, too? When did his comic start getting so violent? Death of the Family is the single most grotesque reading-matter I can remember, and this comes from a guy who spent his entire teenage years nose-deep in pulp horror. Did I enjoy it? No. Do I think material like this ought to be censored? Also no. But with less and less confidence as the years go by.

·       LITERATURE What’s the longest novel one can lend to someone else and still consider oneself a responsible member of society? You will be wondering what’s happened to my frequent updates about pulp fiction. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is what’s happened. A colleague lent me all 1200 pages. Good stuff, though. I lent him Gravity’s Rainbow in revenge return.