New York Mysteries Sept. 9— Sept. 15

Judson Memorial Church sponsored an evening with Valeria Luiselli and Nate Weida. The evening began with Weida’s thigh slapping banjo music, followed by Luiselli’s talk. She was accompanied by Juan Carlos Ruiz. Luiselli read from Tell Me How it Ends, discussed the plight of many refugees and then had a Q & A.
Why did you come here? is a theme that runs through Tell Me How it Ends. The 119 page essay discusses children’s immigration journey to the U. S. The prize is permanent citizenship. The opposite is deportation. Luiselli demonstrates how words stigmatize. Which do you prefer being labelled: illegal immigrant or undocumented refugee? Listening to this articulate woman under the cloud of DACA being ended gave the evening an added urgency.

 

Valeria Luiselli, author of Tell Me How It Ends
Tell Me How It Ends

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nate Weida

Since Netflix will not carry Agatha Christie’s Poirot, the English series after Sept. 30, I’ve been binge watching. It’s been a parade of the U. K.’s finest actors: Ronald Pickup, Eileen Atkins, Anna Massey, Geoffrey Palmer. The list is endless. I think Agatha Christie’s mysteries are intricate puzzles. Her plotting, as all writers know, is superb. When she drifts into thriller territory she’s less successful. But what a body of work: Halloween Story, Murder on the Orient Express, The Clocks. David Suchet fits into the eccentric Poirot part perfectly.

 

 

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears three people fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.