Since I was gloating months ago on Twitter about this bright new idea of mine, I thought I might as well expand a bit on it here. Also, I’ve been terrible at updating the blog, so everything counts, I guess!
The outline below came to me after this year’s Angoulême festival. My girlfriend and I spent a few days in Paris before going home, when she got a phone call from her sister, saying that one of the sister’s two hamsters had died.

She and her then-boyfriend had found it belly-up in the sawdust when they woke up, its abdomen showing clear bitemarks. All the while the other hamster was pounding the treadmill with oblivious glee. How can you pass up a scene like that?

So, here’s what I came up with:

Two hamsters, Fluffy and Wertham, live in a cage. The treadmill is their only entertainment, not least their internal bickering over it.

One morning Fluffy is lying dead in the sawdust, mutilated. Whodunit?

A new hamster, Tantor, is put into the cage, and Wertham begins investigating the circumstances of Fluffy’s death, with Tantor as the chief suspect.

That’s it. Oh, I know how it’s going to end, but I’m not letting on

As I said, this was right after Angoulême, and I was obviously inspired by Cali & Pianina’s “10 petits Insects” to try my hand with a whodunit, but that’s the only similarity.

“10 petits Insects” is a great piece of work, btw, as testified by its inclusion to the Sélection Officiale of Angoulême BD 2010. Highly recommended while you wait for me to finish “Wertham’s Razor”