So, due to the Kobo weekend sale, everything I was reading previously got put on hold so I could try some new stuff to see if I wanted to get some other new stuff that was related to it. The answer turned out to be mostly "yes".
Bought and finished
Ian Hamilton's
The Dragon Head of Hong Kong and
The Water Rat of Wanchai in the bundle edition of the 1st novel and its prequel in his Ava Lee series starring a Chinese-Canadian Hong Kong-born Toronto-raised-and-resident Catholic (ex-Roman) lesbian forensic accountant who works for a slightly extra-legal collections agency tracking down white-collar crime throughout the East Asian portions of the Pacific Rim. Which just strikes me somehow as a rather Canadian kind of character to invent.
Refreshingly, these are basically non-murder mysteries involving solving where a whole bunch of money went and the best way to get it back, with a few occasional kidnappings and beatings and extortion rackets thrown in.
They are pretty heavy on the travel/exotic cultural differences/food porn (which I do kind of like to a certain extent) and Hamilton does tend to write Lee rather like a favourite idealized action heroine on occasion (smart! sexy! tough! resourceful! well-connected! knows a special martial art which often gets her out of physical trouble! and also gay! so that you don't have to worry about Romantic Plot Tumours with the guys she meets taking over the narrative!), but they're entertaining overall and there are worse role models to have than Modesty Blaise, really. And you do find out a lot about how small-scale corporate petty theft and banking shenanigans work (kids, don't try this at home).
I rather liked these, enough to go and purchase* the next couple in series once they dropped to $4.99 (couponable!) after having hovered over the $10 mark at the start of the sale.
Recommended if any of the elements listed above appeal to you and/or you'd like to try a slightly off-beat non-murder sleuth-y type action mystery and you can get the 1st novel at a reasonably low cost. Incidentally, the 1st in series did win the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel (this is our major national mystery/crime writing prize), and the 2nd in series is a Barry Award finalist.
Also finished
Michael Jecks'
Squire Throwleigh's Heir, 7th in his long-running Knights Templar series of medieval murder mysteries starring an ex-Crusader returned to England and his bailiff buddy, which had several out of its 32 total volumes on sale for $1.99 from Simon & Schuster UK (non-couponable).
I rather liked the lengthy historical note with which the author introduced this, giving details about stuff he'd incorporated into the novels and further recommended non-fiction reading.
The actual story wasn't quite as good as I was hoping for, but still fairly well-done, with the historical details incorporated smoothly, and a good depiction of medieval attitudes in daily life as well as towards the crime itself.
The recounting and unfolding of the whodunnit was rather twisty and muddled, as a lot of people were in a position to be under suspicion and promptly muddied the waters further by throwing accusation upon others to divert attention from their own possible guilts and/or those of persons they thought were guilty and were trying to protect/expose. And as it turns out, a lot of suspects were guilty of a lot of stuff, but not necessarily the ultimate crime, which Sir Baldwin and Simon had to gradually figure out.
This was one of the sorts of books where the author does omniscient viewpoint involving the suspects so you can not only try to follow along with the sleuths on their investigations, but also try and guess for yourself exactly what the guilty-sounding party was up to/and or will be able to get away with.
Moderate recommend for historical medieval mystery aficionados. I liked this enough to go back and pick up all the other titles in the series which were on sale for $1.99, but it wasn't compelling enough in terms of storytelling or character personality appeal that I think I'd be tracking down the rest of the series via the library as I would for the Ava Lee books, though that may change after I read the next few.
And read through
Danny Peary's
Cult Sci-Fi Movies: Discover the 10 Best Intergalactic, Astonishing, Far-Out, and Epic Cinema Classics, a
recent freebie which seems to be a sampler for an upcoming set of similar cult cinema essay volumes (horror, crime, midnight movies), apparently reprinted from his ground-breaking 80s
Cult Movies series of books, the 1st of which has its own
Wikipedia article (Peary is a professional film critic who's credited with popularizing the very notion of cult movies to begin with).
This was surprisingly better and even more in-depth to read than I'd hoped for based on an initial skim, providing rather good background info as well as analysis on a number of films ranging from the obscure to the widely-known.
Even though the author warns straight-up that it's a overall harsh, ugly film threaded through with interesting ideas, I kind of want to have a look at
Liquid Sky because of some of the things he mentions about its themes, and I'm similarly curious about a number of other films which TBH, I'll probably never bother to watch.
On the strength of this freebie, I think I've decided to pre-order at least the Crime and Midnight Movies volumes, since they're couponable at Kobo as well as currently discounted by a dollar off the list price and I can cancel if the cost changes significantly before the release date. I'm kind of waffling about the Horror one, since horror is not a genre that I care to watch (except for the occasional times when a favourite middling-obscure actor I like who doesn't get enough work lands a role in one, sigh); on the other hand, I'd be interested in seeing Peary's insider production info and insights on certain films that are part of our current cultural zeitgeist which let's face it, I'm not going to actually sit down and see if I don't have to.
(ETA: Can't pre-order with coupons, guess I'll wait for the release date and hope good discounts are available by then.)
Highly recommended if you've any interest in film history or cult cinema or just want to see what someone who takes the genre seriously has to say about sometimes schlocky sci-fi movies. Especially for free! (while it lasts)
NB: At the time these were written, it was assumed that people would have a hard time getting viewing copies of the films, so there's a thorough spoiler-laden synopsis of each one before the beginning of each essay, which you might want to skip past if you don't want to know all the details going in.
*
But apparently I picked the wrong set of items to sleep upon because if I'd gotten the other thing that I wanted at $4.99 yesterday evening (a HarperCollins bundle now up to $13.99 in all venues, aarghdammit and who changes the prices in the middle of the day on a Monday anyway?!) and waited until today to pick up #2-4 of the Ava Lee series, I could have gotten them at an extra 50¢-$1 off per (adjusted for coupon deduction from the sale price that is, which knocks the savings down to 30-50 cents or so), since apparently the $4.99 is not just the special weekend sale price anymore, but small publisher Spiderline's new introductory price which Kobo then took it upon themselves to discount further this afternoon. 
Oh well, at least it makes things cheaper for future Canadian buyers to pick up and enjoy? (Apparently Macmillan's Picador imprint holds the rights to these in the US and price them at $9.99 each, non-couponable and no bundle omnibuses.)
And considering that I just paid more in overdue library fines over the weekend, I don't begrudge an extra dollar or so going to Support A Canadian Author and a specialty Canadian independent small-press imprint which makes their wares couponable (and occasionally deep-discounts them, if that's not just Kobo being wonky with the sale prices on the last day) since I did get 4 books + a bonus prequel novella which I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy for just $3.14 CAD each for the 4.