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Download the podcasts from Flashpulp.com
FlashPulp.com, 24-28 February 2012
Sometimes trawling the Internet for podcasts brings unexpected rewards.
Written by Toronto-based J. R. D. Skinner, Mulligan Smith and the Endangered Granny takes the conventions of classic
pulp fiction and updates them to a contemporary context. Thus we have the cynical detached private investigator beloved of
detective fiction walking through the contemporary streets, visiting a dentist's surgery and witnessing an obnoxious child
surfing through channels showing an old MASH episode, a Mexican soap opera, and a show about animal attack survivors.
This three-part story, read by an uncredited person, was ingeniously constructed:
rather than following a logical progression from beginning to end, it placed the eponymous hero in three different locations,
with different sets of characters, trying to work out the relationships between each and thereby solve the case. As with
most stories of this nature, it would be invidious of me to disclose too much of the plot; suffice to say that it concerns
a dentist who falls in love with a man much younger than herself, who has a strange relationship with his grandmother. The
man turns out to be a swindler and a bigamist into the bargain,
Mulligan Smith appeared the ideal PI - the kind of person describing himself as a
loiterer, but actually dedicated to his job and his clients' satisfaction. The story had a satisfying end to it, which is
what all 'tec thrillers should possess.
The Mulligan Smith podcast is part of a series of podcasts collectively known as
The Flash Pulp podcast, which at the time of writing runs to nearly three hundred episodes. I applaud the enthusiasm of everyone
involved in maintaining such a worthy venture. Visit www.flashpulp.com to find out more.
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