The lady detectives of Alexander Mccall Smith and Laurie King. You certainly would not like to miss the stories of the 1^st (actually number one!) detective agency in Botswana, imagined by Mccall Smith, or the adventures of the tenants of number 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh. But interestingly, it was the calm stories featuring Isabel Dalhousie that most captured my attention. Isabel, who is quite wealthy, goes through life editing an academic journal on ethics, solving the odd mystery in Edinburgh, getting a younger partner, and a child, while voicing to us her inner thoughts and doubts in a very philosophical and appealing way. Naturally, credit must be awarded to the author of this almost true fictional setting. Odd enough, but in a good way, at least from my perspective, King also shares with us the adventures of another lady detective, Mary Russell in the London of the 1920s. Interestingly, the young lady, also quite wealthy by heritage, goes through meeting an old, almost retired, Sherlock Holmes, saving his life at one point, partnering with him not only to solve mysteries but also in life. Naturally, more female detectives are out there, doing their job, but Isabel and Mary seem to have a grace of their own.

Hitchcock, Jacobs, van Hamme. Alfred Hitchcock made in 1935 a rather remarkable film, still in England, where Robert Donat drags Madeleine Carroll in his attempt to escape a false accusation and his pursuers, both the law and foremost the unfriendly bad guys. It was “The Thirty-nine Steps”. The film includes some catching scenes, for instance, the escape with both main characters hand-cuffed. In the film the bad guys chase the heroes in the Scottish mountainous outdoors. It is almost mandatory to remember such environment when reading the first post Edgar Pierre Jacobs full instalment of Blake and Mortimer, delivered by Ted Benoit and Jean van Hamme in 1996, “L’ Affaire Francis Blake”. It is probably pointless to recall the importance of Jacobs in the Belgium and French comics (i.e. Bande Dessinée, BD), who stands side by side with Hergé, Uderzo, Goscinny and Franquin, just to mention some examples. Anyway, coming to the point, when van Hamme puts Jacobs’ heroes in the Scottish landscape, also to some extent running from danger, and with a girl playing also a relevant role in the story (something that Jacobs never did), the link to some particular segments in Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” is quite well succeeded. Naturally, being Jean van Hamme one of the most experienced and successful plot-writers of the French-Belgium BD industry, one should not really be surprised by the quality of the book they managed to deliver. Both Hitchcock and Jacobs would most likely enjoy the nice match of the wrongly accused man story line pitch and the successful recreation of Blake and Mortimer universe. Subsequent books of Blake and Mortimer, notably with a different author-duo, struggled somehow to match the quality of “L’ Affaire Francis Blake”. The same goes for remakes and movies inspired on Hitch’s most wellknown films, but that’s another story.