And now, to no one's surprise, I'm going back to read the five Harry Hole books I didn't read. Starting at book five likely wasn't the best decision, since I was fairly "meh" after reading it, but I found that I missed the character, so I'm going back to read the books I had missed.

This is book 2 of the Harry Hole (hō-lay? hol-lee? hōl!) series. Again, Harry is on the other side of the world. Again, he is solving an odd murder. Again, there are so many twists and turns and what the hell, I am so confused moments, that, yes, I enjoyed the book (minus the murder and the brutality parts).

The book takes place mostly in Thailand. There are a number of actions that Harry does that are referred to in passing in later books that I'm glad I read this book. I suspect I missed a lot of other references, having no context for them when I read the later books.

As with the Harry Dresden and Harry Potter books, I recommend this Harry series if you like Scandinavian crime mysteries and can stand gruesome descriptions and horrific acts. I tended to skip over the dark parts, without loss of continuity.

With the current Netflix Original show Jessica Jones currently available in its complete first season, a number of my friends have been watching. The show is dark and sits uncomfortably in the soul. It explores the concept of "the devil made me do it" in a very tangible sense: a mutant in the Marvel Universe with the ability of mind-control.

As a fan of the Marvel Universe, I know most of the major, overarching plot threads of the universe up until the late nineties. So, when my friends started talking about Jessica Jones, I was intrigued, and also started watching the show. When I realized I couldn't separate out Krysten Ritter's performance from her role in "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23," I figured reading the original source, the comics, was probably the best move to understand what's going on.

This graphic novel is a collection of Alias 1-9, starting with a back story of how the series came to be. I'm intrigued that it started just around the time I stopped reading comics, but my timing has never been that great in a lot of things. I likely wouldn't have picked up the comic, but I'm enjoying them now.

A number of minor, and not so minor, Marvel Universe characters appear in the series, causing me to go off to catch up on the series. Yay for wikipedia and its like.

If you're a fan of the show, read the comics. Much better backstory. Different plot. Fun read.