Over the next two years, several prominent opposition figures were murdered in mysterious circumstances.
Some believe the weather is already being shaped by "chemtrails" – aeroplane contrails deliberately laced with toxic chemicals – and mysterious weather warmongers are, for reasons unknown, making the eastern US unbearably chilly and California stricken by drought.
As Madden explains, a combination of factors including the risk of deploying reporters to a far away country dealing with a mysterious deadly virus, meant editors were reluctant to cover the story.
Worse still, an unapologetic socialist - the mysterious Victor Grayson - captured the nonconformist stronghold of Colne Valley.
There's 'The Uncle', the mysterious man obsessed with Christianity who used to pick up prostitutes, talk to them about God and give them drugs.
In the German capital, he had a romance with the actor Marlene Dietrich, and – according to Barki – is also rumoured to have had a fling with Anastasia, the mysterious daughter of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II.
I floated silently past all kinds of amazing riverside homes – old manor houses, tiny cottages, boathouses and mysterious creeks, and ogled, like a particularly inquisitive fish, at the secret riches of waterside life.
But the most introspective and mysterious moment in the story is the annunciation – the appearance of the archangel Gabriel to Mary to tell her she will give birth to the son of God.
There's the mysterious issue of his real name, for instance - Kevin Fowler.
But, with the change of rights holder, a mysterious sudden surge in rural interest ahead of the first BBC-broadcast final since 2009 resulted in the landlords of The Bull, the radio soap's pub, panicking that they couldn't afford a big-screen TV to satisfy demand for Arsenal v Aston Villa, and friends stepping in to help them out.
Insightful, sympathetic writers, such as this paper's Peter Bradshaw or the Observer's Philip French, accord Tarantino what, to me, is a mysterious degree of respect.
