Article by Ian Thirkettle
This blog is not a review, more a double recommendation.
First, the mystery story: Death and the Compass. This is a short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. A Rabbi is found dead in a hotel room, stabbed in the chest. The room is filled with Kabbalah texts and a single page in a typewriter that reads “The first letter of the name has been written.” The celebrated detective and “reasoning machine” Erik Lönnrot suspects a rabbinical explanation but is he seeing patterns that may not be there?
I urge you to go and read the story. It can be found on line here: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3433&context=nmq and is about 14 pages long, read and enjoy.
The second reccomdation is the podcast Very Bad Wizards. This is a podcast featuring a philosopher, Tamler Sommers, and a psychologist, David Pizarro, who share a love for ethics, pop culture, and cognitive science. Each podcast usually covers a philosophical subject and a psychological subject.
Episode 282 has a disection of Death and the Compass. Here there are spoilers, so read the story before listening to the podcast. The podcast can be found here: https://verybadwizards.com/episode/episode-282-fearful-symmetry-borges-death-and-the-compass
I quite enjoy the Very Bad Wizards podcasts. The two presenters are clearly very good friends and have a relaxed presenting style, they also cover a wide range of subjects so there is always something of interest. Their name comes from the Wizard of Oz; not a bad person just a very bad wizard. The allusion to looking behind the curtain is not lost.
Having read the story and listened to the podcast, do you agree with their conclusions?
The City Adventurers love reading about mystery, so we’ve started our own book club.
Join the Solve The Murder Book Club
