What is this blog about?
Well, to begin with my main focus will be on mystery short stories of the impossible kind.
However, to see whether this is something you'd be interested in, let's first engage in some definition making.
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| Oh, come on. Definitions are fun! |
In the scope of this blog, what is a "mystery"?
I want to immediately make clear that my definition of "mystery" here on the blog will be more limited than what is perhaps featured under this heading in your local bookstore (or, as this is the 21st century, on Amazon).
In Swedish - my native language - we have the wonderful word "pusseldeckare". It is a compound of two words:
- pussel - literally "jigsaw puzzle"
- deckare - short form of "detektiv", which perhaps obviously means "detective," and in turn is a short form of "detektivhistoria"/"detektivroman"/"detektivberättelse", all of which is best translated as "detective story".
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| Hmm... I wonder where that final piece should go. |
Unfortunately, unless I'm mistaken, English has no term for this type of fiction that is wholly appropriate. The usual epithet used is "Golden Age Mysteries", but I think that description is somewhat misleading (and also fairly cumbersome to write, though English has a penchant for abbreviations so I guess that isn't a huge problem).
It is misleading for two reasons:
First, I think it's hard to exactly pinpoint what the "Golden Age" actually is. No two people are agreed on where it starts and where it ends. It usually ends with people saying "Oh, you know it's kinda from the end of WW1 to the late 40s". And then a third person shows up and disagrees...
More importantly it is misleading because even if we could pinpoint the start and end of this Golden Age, you would not find any year within this so called Golden Age where all mysteries are of this particular type - fair play, clues strewn everywhere, you know what I mean.
I mean, Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd", Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest" and Kenneth Fearing's "The Big Clock" could all arguably be called Golden Age Mysteries. But I think the dissimilarities between these novels are bigger than their similarities, and really, what's the point with a term that becomes so fuzzy?
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| Are you confused yet? |
Definition of "mystery"
Therefore, I propose to use the term "mystery" here as applied only to fair play mysteries. This means that we will exclude thrillers, adventure stories, spy novels, and more importantly modern style stories about crime and/or serial killer stories. Personally, I'd rather apply a term like "criminous stories" as the umbrella term and reserve "mystery" to stories that actually feature mysteries - solvable ones! If you have any opinions on this, do please let me know.
The upside of this definition is also that I don't have to continuously argue for the inclusion of authors who wrote their material in a time period that was clearly before or after the Golden Age. It defines a style, not a time period.
Excellent! So what's all this about short fiction then?
One of my main projects at the moment is to create some kind of concordance of worthy impossible mystery short stories in Swedish. In order to do that, I have scanned a fairly large amount of stories from Swedish anthologies and short story collections that I own. That resulted in maybe 75-100 stories.
The next part is to translate those stories that I only have in the English language and that I feel should be included in this large collection. This includes reading several collections and anthologies and trying to evaluate whether each story is interesting enough to be included or not. If I am of the opinion that a short story should be included, well, then there's only the small matter of translating them all into Swedish...
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| If only... if only |
However, it was a big help that in a previous folly^H^H^Hproject of mine, I'd already scanned and translated all stories by authors such as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Clayton Rawson and Edmund Crispin (and a handful of stories by Edward D. Hoch as well, though unfortunately far from all his impossible crime output). That meant that I could concentrate on all other authors. Not the hugest delimitation, but in a project such as this you take what you get, right?
This is where I am at the moment in this project. I've translated around 100 stories by now, and have around 100 left to translate. If you're quick at counting you've already noticed that that will be around 300 stories.
So which stories have I included? And why those particular stories? Well, that's what this blog will reveal in coming posts. Knowing me, there will probably be posts about other "mysterious" stuff. However, I'm not a particularly great reviewer. I know what I like, but I'm not particularly good at putting in words why. So bear that caveat in mind when you return here.
Watch out for Hillary Applegate. She works with her mother, Valerie Houghton, to hack, harass, threaten, and stalk litigants in Family Court. Ms. Applegate is pretending to operate a tech company with the name Digital HQ. She does not seem to be engaged in any legitimate business. The shell company likely only exists to process payments.
ReplyDeleteHillary Applegate has access to all of her mother’s connections in Santa Clara County. She is making a ton of money working with all the divorce lawyers. Once she gets into your electronic devices, Ms. Applegate exerts almost complete control over her victim’s life. You cannot exist without electronic communication in this day and age. The Houghton’s exploit this.
Once Ms. Applegate clones your phone, she will be reading/writing/deleting emails and text messages. She will also have access to your social contacts, browsing history, GPS locations, and all of your passwords.
This is a modern-day sociopath that gets off on “surreptitious pranks” and ruining other people’s lives. My own kids are being raped because of this animal. Ms. Applegate demands that I let her continue to make money from the sexual abuse and stop trying to protect them. She, herself, is a mother, so I don’t understand how she can be so cold blooded about this.
Is Ms. Applegate a sick pedophile? Does she get sexual enjoyment from doing this?
Furthermore, Ms. Applegate employs a gang of thugs to physically stalk and assault me. I cannot go anywhere without these degenerates following me.
Valerie Houghton says that she “lost a lot of business” because I complained. Since Ms. Applegate had her “aha” moment to work with other lawyers, you will likely never know that she is hacking you.
https://wwwcrossx.blogspot.com/2013/12/ted-bundy-case-cross-examination.html?sc=1760470230588#c1568869710827664061
The Digital HQ con is nothing new. Hillary Applegate and her mother previously used to embezzle money using a different company, Metaview. The Houghton’s are a family of con artists. Ms. Applegate used the ill-gotten money to treat her friends to fancy meals, pay for her college education and get a brand-new Porsche. Her mother was eventually indicted, but he charges soon went away. This is because the Houghton’s are connected to the District Attorney. They operate without fear. That’s why they are so violent and feel entitled to take your health.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6981163-HoughtonIndictment-Docket/
There is much more information here:
https://forum.legaljunkies.com/forum/attorneys-courts-litigation/civil-litigation/69836-austin-family-court-corruption/page16
https://thefamilycourtcircus.com/2025/05/02/family-court-injustice/
Hillary Applegate actually has 11 properties. She also owns her own home.
ReplyDeleteJust scroll down to Hillary Applegate’s profile and click on the “more about Hillary” tab.
https://dgtlhq.com/about
Then click on the “Polk Ranch property” (the four-bedroom house in Scottsdale)
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/579139738887750177?source_impression_id=p3_1711741088_ktc6VxUzW4NaWAei
Then click on the “host profile” and scroll down to see all the properties.
https://www.airbnb.com/users/profile/1467292151561484715?previous_page_name=PdpHomeMarketplace
Why even list this on her website? What is the association? Is Ms. Applegate mocking all the people that she hacked? Did she liquidate their assets and buy homes with the money?
I’ve filed a complaint with the IRS regarding Hillary Applegate. I believe that she is using Digital HQ to launder money from her hacking business. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that her company does anything legitimate. It is likely just a shell company to declare an income and pay her “contractors”.
ReplyDeleteWith the number of properties that she has, Ms. Applegate has to be one of most notorious hackers out there. Her Scottsdale property alone must be worth at least $1,500,000.
Applegate cut her teeth working with Ruth Patrick at WomenSV. There have been numerous reports that victims of domestic violence were tricked into leaving their electronic devices behind for hacking. This is the type of grifting that you can expect from the Houghton’s.
Things are different now that they work with a street gang. No physical access to the device is even needed. All they need to do is capture the device’s WIFI or Bluetooth signal for a moment. Then Applegate will send the device a text message with a link and remotely open the link. Your phone will be cloned at that point, giving Ms. Applegate complete control over the phone.
Ms. Applegate is much like her mother. They have no boundaries. Everything is theirs to violate and destroy. This duo will enter your private life like a cancer. Nothing will ever be the same. They are MONSTERS! Even your health is not off limits.
They will even force your children (as young as two) to have sexual experiences. Then the Houghton’s will falsely claim to be involved in philanthropy related to child protection and the promotion of the wellbeing of youth.
I hope that the IRS will conduct an audit. I believe that Ms. Applegate will have a difficult time proving that monies were legally earned.
Hillary Applegate started using her hacking skill working for Ruth Patrick at WomenSV. Several victims of domestic violence that sought help at this agency reported being tricked into leaving their electronic devices behind. Said devices were subsequently hacked.
ReplyDeleteThe agency specifically catered to DV victims that were lived in affluent areas. Ms. Applegate was their “social media manager”.
https://davisvanguard.org/2023/12/nonprofit-founder-poised-to-flee-as-ex-wives-demand-fair-trials-and-return-of-funds-taken-from-duped-donors/
https://davisvanguard.org/2023/04/silicon-valley-domestic-violence-nonprofit-seeks-to-discredit-over-50-former-clients/
This is how she has made millions of dollars from hacking. Hillary Applegate targets people with high valued assets and involved in a divorce. She probably makes more than the lawyers.
Then she claims to be supportive of mothers in her blogposts. Women have to be the vast majority of people that Hillary hacks. She is so phony and fake about the whole thing, even constructing a website that advertises services that she does not render. This is so that she can declare the millions of dollars that she earns. It’s all a big scam.
I guess that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Hillary Applegate says that she works mostly with women and mothers. This is misleading.
ReplyDeleteMs. Applegate does likely target more women in family court than she does men. That’s because men are usually the abusers in a relationship. They usually have more money at the time of separation.
And if she targeted the bad parent, the divorce would be over in no time and there would be no one to blackmail.
Of course, Hillary Applegate is painting a rosy picture. This is to dupe her readers into thinking that she is supportive of women, when she is in fact abusing them. There is no workforce other than her gang of thugs, Valerie Houghton and Jacqueline Keidel Martinez.
That is why she removed her review from“Dr. Ritz” (nonexistent person). It’s all fake.
Hillary Applegate is a H-A-C-K-E-R. She does not work with fortune 500 companies, nor does she do anything productive or legal.
“88 percent of our contractors are women, and of those women, close to 30 percent are mothers. There is undeniably a “motherhood pay gap” in our culture. In a study reported by the World Economic Forum, the spousal earnings gap doubles between two years before the birth of the first child and the year after that child is born, with women’s earnings generally going down. Mothers tend to turn towards part-time jobs or positions that are more favorable to raising children. At Digital HQ, women and mothers can pursue their professional passions while doing so with flexibility.”
https://shoutoutarizona.com/meet-hillary-applegate-founder-ceo-of-digital-hq/
Hillary Applegate is just like her mother. They are both profit from being involved in other people’s divorces.
ReplyDeleteIf you want proof that the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” just read the indictment of Hillary Applegate’s mother.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6981163-HoughtonIndictment-Docket/
Valerie Houghton started a real estate company called “MetaView”. She embezzled money from her partners by depositing money directly into her personal accounts and using the company credit card for personal expenses. Ms. Houghton would give the credit card to her Ms. Applegate so that she could treat her friends to fancy meals at Morten’s. She would also use company money to pay for her daughter’s college tuition, a brand-new Porsche, and “extravagant vacations”.
Now Applegate has started a real estate company of her own – Hometown Hosts.
https://www.hometownhosts.com/aboutus
Hillary Applegate and her mother have upended the way people game the legal system. No longer does it stop with public corruption. Ms. Applegate and Ms. Houghton have devised a strategy that involves street thugs. Said thugs will ‘take care of you’ if you don’t do what the Houghton’s want.
ReplyDeleteThey will threaten, intimidate, harass, and even assault people who have landed on the Houghton’s bad side. Privacy will be compromised beyond just your electronic devices. The Houghton’s thugs will get into home and car, plant cameras, and obtain your spare keys. These people are mostly young Latino men that wear red articles of clothing. They were probably already part of a street gang before they started working for the Houghton’s.
In any case, Ms. Applegate didn’t become a millionaire by accident. She and Valerie Houghton use the combination of personal connections in the legal system and street violence to make families submit to their every will. It will be almost futile to fight back. They will not hesitate to take your life.
Since her “ah-ha moment”, Hillary Applegate remained active in hacking Silicon Valley residents involved in litigation. The only difference is that she is using a shell company to launder the proceeds and pay her “contractors”.
ReplyDeleteSo, if you live in San Jose, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Los Gatos, Saratoga, or Los Altos, you might not even know that Ms. Applegate is hacking you and messing with your life. That’s because she now works with other attorneys besides her mother.
Applegate and her street gang are in high demand. Not many other hackers have “contractors” to stalk their targets.
Part of the purpose of the hacking is to foil your every attempt to protect your children. The Houghton’s have connections with other lawyers, judges, the District Attorney’s Office, and DFCS. Their specialty is spreading money to those willing to take it. None of it comes out of the Houghton’s pocket. It all comes from the offender’s pocket.
ReplyDeleteThe effect amounts to a sick practical joke. My own kids have suffered from being molested over the last ten years. No one will do anything to stop it. This makes the Houghton’s laugh. You can see many of the taunting messages that I was directed to view here.
https://www.scribd.com/document/628344196/Valerie-Runyan-Houghton-Therapist-Attorney-Divorce
The same thing happened to many other parents after the Valerie and Hillary were made aware of abuse. Violet Brooks could do absolutely nothing to protect her three young daughters. Ms. Houghton actually went on to testify as a special witness in the case. She made sure to completely shut the door on any protection.
Ms. Houghton and Ms. Applegate also did the same to the Terpko kids. Houghton actually served as the guardian ad litem for the children. Then she filed for a restraining order against the protective parent which was later granted.
The Houghton’s are just cold when it comes to children suffering. They cannot feel empathy for them. All they want is to establish control over you and your children to prolong the abuse and fill their pockets with the abuser’s money.
Make sure to see Valerie Houghton’s websites (Hillary Applegate’s mother). They are two peas in a pod. The Houghton’s are experts at misleading and conning the people are them.
ReplyDeleteMs. Houghton makes it seem as if she is a gentle and caring therapist who works tirelessly to make her clients happy. This is not the person that I encountered.
She destroyed my body because I didn’t want my kids to be raped. She also made sure (along with Hillary) that I couldn’t work, which has forced me to live in a car for the last 8 years.
The Houghton’s are truly a family of monsters.
https://famdynamics.com/about
https://www.valeriehoughtonmft.com/
ReplyDeleteJacqueline Keidel Martinez is Hillary Applegate’s right-hand man. She is the same kind of degenerate – helping ruin the lives of other people’s children.
Keidel Martinez, herself, is a mother. What she does to other people’s children has to be reflection of her own ability to be a mother. It can be no other way.
She is just a horrible human being pilfering from families going through a divorce through hacking and inducing misery.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinekeidelmartinez
Then Keidel Martinez pays for articles to be written about her in “Fabulous People”. What a joke!
https://fabulousarizona.com/fabulous-people/fabulous-people-jacqueline-keidel-martinez/
Hillary Applegate is not too good at hiding who she is. Even when she pays for articles to be published about her on websites that employ excellent SEO strategies, Ms. Applegate gives it all away.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, Hillary claims to be an agent of change in work-life balance. She glamorizes her work by pretending to be a secret agent. Having a private militia and working behind the scenes must be intoxicating for her.
As far as changing your work or life, the more appropriate word to use would be “destroy”. This is because Valerie Houghton’s daughter is a complete sadist. She gets off on inflicting misery on her targets and hiding in real time behind her computer screen.
How Digital HQ became an [secret] agent of change in work-life balance
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/profiles-strategies/2024/05/how-digital-hq-is-improving-work-life-balance-for.html
Here is another one of Hillary Applegate’s paid for profiles. She claims to be a “queen” that is a “digital marketing b*tch”. This is really how Ms. Applegate she acts.
ReplyDeleteShe wants to rule over your family, as you kiss her hands and beg her to spare your kids from being raped. Being a “b*tch” is really an understatement. Ms. Applegate is a sociopathic and degenerate child abuser.
I just don’t see how she can do this to other people’s children and still be an effective and loving mother to her child. It is highly improbable.
In any case, keep your kids away from Applegate. She gets off on abuse.
“She's a queen, but she's still a digital marketing b*tch”
https://www.instagram.com/p/C5mT-rWsLGb/
All you need to see is the social media posts from Hillary Applegate’s mother. The Houghton’s are plain sick to have a favorable view of pedophilia. They believe that the only thing wrong with it is the associated stigma. To them it is not a crime and just part of gender identity. (THEIR OWN WORDS)
ReplyDeleteYou can also see her mother’s sick post regarding 13-year olds engaged in sexual activity. It is reminiscent of Yelp review (by “Max”) for Ms. Houghton that was written by another teenage boy. He claims that the Houghton’s hacked him and discussed his pornography preferences with him.
https://www.scribd.com/document/628344196/Valerie-Runyan-Houghton-Therapist-Attorney-Divorce
Here is Max's review on Yelp:
ReplyDeleteMax K.
San Francisco, CA
010
Jan 12, 2021
Parents and kids beware. This is not the therapist for your family. She will make the parents believe what they are doing is right, but it is clearly not. She will treat your children like shit. About 2 years after my terrible experience with this woman, I started seeing another therapist. After I told my therapist the things that Valarie R. Houghton did to me and siblings, she told me that its really fucked up and that it's not something practiced in family therapy. Here's what she did: She convinced my parents to install spyware onto me and my siblings phones, and the next time we saw her, she had a binder for each of us: containing everything we did "wrong" on our phones. Ex. (texts, photos, videos, search history, app usage). I wont reveal too much information but when she pulled out my folder, she had many things to embarrass me about but she began by reading my search history in front of my entire family. (siblings included) What was my search history? It was porn. I was a 13 year old boy going through puberty, of course I was watching porn. Obviously I didn't want my parents and siblings to know, and to this day I am curious what the therapeutic benefit of exposing me like that was. We literally all sat in awkward silence as she read through countless porn titles, and pop up ads. Again I don't want to give to much detail, but she did similar things to my siblings. My siblings and I got together and made a plan to get our parents to stop seeing her. Thank god it worked. If any other kids had this kind of experience please share it here.
PS...
I posted this comment on google reviews last night but overnight she changed her google location to "San Jose Chiropractor" so the reviews are gone. I can't find her on google maps anymore. Shady asf
https://www.yelp.com/biz/valerie-houghton-rn-mft-esq-campbell?start=10
There were even two articles written in Davis Van Guard about Valerie Houghton’s scams and influence over court proceedings.
ReplyDeletehttps://davisvanguard.org/2023/10/is-your-childs-attorney-a-crook/
https://davisvanguard.org/2023/07/power-outage-disrupts-secret-judge-club-investigation/
So be careful. This duo can get out of anything, then have you prosecuted. They have no fear of being in trouble with the law.
Hillary Applegate and Valerie Houghton don’t care about anyone. If they did, I would have never been poisoned and my kids would have been protected from being raped.
ReplyDeleteThey are focused on filling up their pockets with other people’s money. In their minds, it is their birthright to do it. Hillary Applegate and her mother are your “queens”, even you want nothing to do with them.
You have to see it from their point of view. The Houghton’s live in a different reality which has been supported by the legal system.
And this reality is all that Hillary Applegate knows. She has been raised by her mother to be violent towards others and sexually aggressive with other people’s children. There is no other way for her to be. It is completely ingrained in her. Applegate also admits in LinkedIn post to watching her mother work from a young age.
Please see an article written by Citizen Portal about the cover up by the Houghton's of the sexual abuse of my kids.
ReplyDeletehttps://citizenportal.ai/articles/3248473/Santa-Clara-County/California/
Hillary Applegate has made her LinkedIn private or has deleted the profile. I believe that she is trying to hide the fact that she used to work for WomenSV.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, there is an archived screenshot.
Here it is:
https://archive.ph/wip/dlQ88
Here is a threatening post by Valerie Houghton. She appears to be threatening to kill my kids if I don’t shut up about the child molestation. The 3 attachments to her post are clear.
ReplyDelete1. The first one references making shoes out of dead children.
2. The second one references child molestation.
3. The third one references shutting up.
You really need to see this for yourself to believe this.
https://www.threads.com/@valeriehoughton/post/DPKTRKIjQTE (post)
https://archive.ph/wip/Im9X1 (post archived)
https://archive.ph/wip/ou3OE (attachments archived)
Hillary Applegate’s mother previously joked that molesting goats [kids] is not reportable. You can watch her mother here:
ReplyDeletehttps://rumble.com/v2ceev2-valerie-houghton-joke-that-kids-getting-molested-is-not-reportable.html
There is a related post from today by her mother. She says that a post regarding not protecting goats is brilliant.
It’s all so sick. I don’t understand how Hillary or her mother can find this stuff funny and be so active in forcing children to live this way.
https://x.com/VRHOUGHTON/status/1991522808762101895
https://archive.ph/wip/Ytn7C (archived post)
Here you can see what Hillary Applegate and her mother did to my face:
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.ph/nf2ag
They poisoned me so many times that now also all of my organs are damaged and testicles atrophied. I have also have lost sensation across my entire body and trouble swallowing. Tampering with someone’s food is easier than one might think.
Just see what Hillary Applegate and Valerie Houghton did to Daya Baran after he discovered that someone was molesting his toddler daughter. The pigmentation in his face was damaged and he became a diabetic when he tried to stop the abuse.
You can read about his experiences and see him in the emergency room here:
https://freearianna.org/story (Daya Baran website)
https://archive.is/0PsNL (Daya Baran’s archived website)
Hillary Applegate can get to you from anywhere. I’ve fled to Nevada in an attempt to preserve my standing to protect my kids and to get away from her.
Applegate sent some of her goons, but she also hired several locals. Here are a couple of them:
https://archive.ph/wip/YpFab
They follow me wherever I go 24/7.
I just think that it is wrong to equate transgenderism and pedophilia. One doesn't justify the other.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=64319