For the residents of Lakeshore, Ontario, the black fungus caking their homes was a problem, and they blamed the local distillery. For James Scott, the Sherlock Holmes of fungi, the identity of the unsightly mold was a mystery waiting to be solved. And for Adam Rogers, senior editor at WIRED, Scott’s quest was a story that needed to be told. Rogers spent three days tailing the fungus detective, and the result is a beautiful, sensory, fungal whodunit, with a brief history of alcohol on the side.

I was recently asked if I wanted to contribute anything to the Open Notebook, a site where science writers write about science writing. It specialises in taking big, important stories and dissecting how they