The Red Paste Murders Musaicum Vintage Mysteries

Will you forgive yourself if under an influence of a weird substance you turn into a ruthless murderer? What if you are a detective yourself and in-charge of the murder investigations? Will you surrender yourself or will you hide yourself from the law? Peter Wacks will soon learn it the hard way… Excerpt: "I shall never know what dreadful impulse compels me to write it all down. My life is so many, many times forfeit to the State that were my hideous secret to become known, even now, after all these years, within an hour infuriated crowds would gather at my gate and I should be torn limb from limb without the slightest hope of mercy or reprieve. I shall never be forgiven. My crimes were too brutal. I spared neither young nor old, and every deed of violence that could bring pain and horror it was fiendish joy to do..."

Peter Wacks was an unimpressive and weak man until he came across a mysterious "red paste." Suddenly, from a harmless being, he turned into a ruthless and cold-blooded killer! Like Jekyll and Hyde, he goes on a murder rampage in the night and during daytime becomes a detective to find the so-called murderer. Will Peter be able to outwit himself and stop his descent into chaos and madness? Or will he succumb under his negative self? Excerpt: "I shall never know what dreadful impulse compels me to write it all down. My life is so many, many times forfeit to the State that were my hideous secret to become known, even now, after all these years, within an hour infuriated crowds would gather at my gate and I should be torn limb from limb without the slightest hope of mercy or reprieve. I shall never be forgiven. My crimes were too brutal. I spared neither young nor old, and every deed of violence that could bring pain and horror it was fiendish joy to do..."

A headless corpse found in a flat becomes a source of tension for the police with his identity being linked to a Basque anarchist! Excerpt: "Look here, Pointer. Suppose you hand over the reins of that case you're on to Clark. He can carry on all right now. Superintendent Maybrick of Hampstead wants help. Or rather, I think he needs it. He's just been called in to a horrid mess, a murder, in one of the flats in his district. From certain things he thinks it's an anarchist plot gone wrong, 'biter bit' sort of thing," Major Pelham said vaguely; "he's got into touch with the Foreign Office already. So by this time there's sure to be some F.O. man sprinting along to have a first look."

A ghost prank by a bunch of youngster goes horribly wrong when one of them gets fatally injured by a loaded revolver. Was it really an accident or was it a pre-planned murder? Excerpt: "Moy was about the same age, around twenty-five; small of stature, quick and eager in eye and movement. Tark, the third man, struck such a different note that at first glance one would have taken him for a foreigner. Moy liked Haliburton, but he did not care for his companion, whom he had met in his company a couple of times lately. But, though he did not like Tark, Moy was interested in the man. For the young solicitor was writing a play in secret, and was keenly interested in finding characters for it. Haliburton, he had decided, was no earthly good to a writer. Rich. Easy going. Kindly...but this other, the chap with the name that suited him somehow—because it rhymed with shark probably, Moy decided—he might be very useful. He turned to him now."

A group of guests gather in a large country house, owned by the dying Lord Warbeck, who wants what is left of his family around him to celebrate what he assumes will be his last Christmas. The guests are a motley bunch, including Sir Julius Warbeck, Chancellor of the Exchequer, the wife of one of his underlings, the fascist son of the present Lord Warbeck, and the Chancellor's bodyguard. Also present is foreign historian Dr Bottwink, and the traditional faithful butler. When the first murder occurs, the house is cut off from the rest of the world by a heavy snowfall, and it is left to Sir Julius's bodyguard to initiate a preliminary investigation before contact can be made with the local police force.

This book presents the bold and original proposal to replace the general appellation of 'world cinema' with the more substantive concept of 'realist cinema'. Veering away from the usual focus on modes of reception and spectatorship, it locates instead cinematic realism in the way films are made. The volume is structured across three innovative categories of realist modes of production: 'non-cinema', or a cinema that aspires to be life itself; 'intermedial passages', or films that incorporate other artforms as a channel to historical and political reality; and 'total cinema', or films moved by a totalising impulse, be it towards the total artwork, total history or universalising landscapes. Though mostly devoted to recent productions, each part starts with the analysis of foundational classics, which have paved the way for future realist endeavours, proving that realism is timeless and inherent in cinema from its origin.