The Crooked Mile Clarion.
Posted on January 17, 2020 by Uncle Mortemius

Yay, it's time for a new character! And every good mystery needs an intrepid reporter, right?

Mr. Noguchi is named after Yone Noguchi, a writer who immigrated to California from Japan in the 1890s and worked as a journalist in the Bay Area. (Of course, *our* Mr. Noguchi is in no way meant to be the real Yone Noguchi. Just a tribute to an interesting historical figure!)

7 thoughts on “The Crooked Mile Clarion.”

  1. Readasaur

    I really hope that Mr. Noguchi doesn’t die, but an intrepid reporter in a story that already has plucky kids as protagonists?
    His odds are not looking great.

  2. Peya Luna

    oh my, there´s the smell of carrion in the clarion!

    1. Uncle Mortemius

      ha! XD

  3. McChuck

    Huh. I always thought the Crooked Mile was set in Maine. Maybe that’s from reading too much Stephen King.

    1. Uncle Mortemius

      Nope, California 🙂 I love spooky Maine-ish settings (yup, cause of Stephen King!), but since I’ve never been, I don’t feel like I’d do a good job setting a story there… And I like California Gold Rush history, so it’s fun to use that as a backdrop!

  4. Yakumo

    That is an interesting bit of fact about a real life Mr. Noguchi. I was thinking it was a bit much for someone Japanese to be in the east coast, at least outside a major metropois like New York, but hey!

    And what Peya Luna said.

    1. Uncle Mortemius

      Heh! What isn’t a bit much in this story?! XD

      But yeah, just to clarify, it’s set in California, as the Gold Rush was tapering off. The Gold Rush brought a lot of people from different corners of the world to rinky-dink towns that had sprung up in the middle of nowhere — one of the things I find really fascinating about that period in history! 🙂 AFAIK, the real Mr. Noguchi stuck with cities…but I could imagine a city reporter might’ve decided to go write about Gold Rush towns and then stayed on to run the local paper, y’know? (Also I *think* he might have gotten mixed up in something sinister, but don’t tell anyone I said that…!)

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