This is the Way the Murder Ends Monday
Feb. 8th, 2016 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bArchived from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
Scales of Justice was pretty middle-of-the road Marsh, with a low-key investigation of a grisly murder. There was quite a lot of buildup regarding a shameful village secret, which made it even more disappointing when [Spoiler redacted until I figure out spoiler cuts on DW]. Maybe that's why the characters felt like such a Standard Mystery Assortment (Village Edition) even though they weren't exactly. The deciding clues are almost all fish-related, with lots of attention to whether a particular cat ate a particular fish. This makes for an interesting stab at a Special Topics Mystery but left me with the taste of fish in my mouth -- another subconscious reason not to like it as much? -- and doesn't have the bite of Marsh's theater and art-world mysteries.
thisbluespirit, you will be happy to hear that this book contains [Spoiler redacted], and not one but TWO peripheral romances for the TV adaptation to torpedo.
Also: I got two more Margery Allinghams from the library. I KNOW, but The Tiger in the Smoke was recommended to me long, long ago as Allingham's best, so I wanted to make sure I read it before I left the Allinghamverse behind. Feel free to skip the results.
Coroner's Pidgin was a perfectly enjoyable period piece. It has a terrific premise (society matron finds a dead woman in her famous son's bed, thinks, "This won't do at all," and immediately engages Lugg to help her move the body to a less suspicious location) that blossoms into a complicated wartime smuggling plot. It all holds together pretty well and there's some great anxious end-of-the-world atmosphere to go with the racing around the countryside in search of stolen treasures and corpses. There's a faint but distinct Homecoming of Odysseus motif. It's all right!
Tiger in the Smoke is even more atmospheric and bombed-out, and extremely uneven. Someone has been haunting a war widow who is about to remarry by dressing up as her dead husband and sending her indistinct pictures of himself. This leads, somehow or other, to a slew of murders, a treasure hunt, and a manhunt. Along the way there are moments of creepy menace, longer passages of murky confusion, and completely baffling clauses like, "Bill, the effeminate to whom fear was an exitant. . ."
Allingham's policemen are not bad -- I've always liked Stanis Oates, and there's a talented new detective who has some good lines. Her crooks are less successful, and it was probably a mistake to set so much of The Tiger in the Smoke in their company. I can see why a lot of people consider this Allingham's best book: the Significant Fog gets plenty of work to do, the "haunting" idea is wonderfully evocative, and there's an attempt to portray the destructive effects of the war on a wide range of people that is admirable and interesting. The final confrontation between the clergyman and the killer is good -- I think I liked it because it was something Father Brown might have done if Chesterton were willing to let Father Brown get hurt -- and the ending is almost good, or very good in parts but ultimately a little cheap, or just good -- I'm not really sure. Allingham's random sexist asides are back, few and scattered but still noticeable, like a handful of crocuses poking their green heads out of the slush. Bright little random sexist crocuses, hello!
I haven't said anything about Campion because, apart from some vague regret about how much I would have liked a nice Odysseus motif if I cared about Campion a little more, I barely noticed he was there. Some good news: Val is still working, despite the weird posturing of that spineless dominance guy from The Fashion in Shrouds, and the fact that Amanda has had a child apparently means that Allingham is going to stop hitting me over the head with how young she looks. Small mercies are mercies nonetheless.
What I'm Reading Now
Christie's There is a Tide has some similar themes (post-war social upheaval, rationing being a damn nuisance) and is much easier to read. There's an odd prologue in which Poirot turns down some requests that will probably later turn out to be relevant, and then Poirot disappears and we follow some other people around for a while. The formerly comfortable Cloade family is having a terrible time adjusting to the post-war economy. If their rich brother hadn't remarried before he died, they would have gotten all his money, but he did remarry and now all his money is going to his young wife, to be redistributed to the rest of the family after her death. It's too bad the late Mr. Cloade didn't take the time to make the terms of his will less conductive to murder, but we don't always think of these things when we're alive.
The rich brother's widow seems to be a good-hearted but stupid woman who is being manipulated and abused by her brother (a creepy hothead who lives with her). Does this mean she will actually turn out to be a ruthless criminal mastermind? Maybe, maybe not. But wait! Her first husband may not have died at all, which will mean that she has no legal claim on her current dead husband's money and it will all go to her hapless social-upheaval-addled in-laws, to help them put off any further addling for another year or two. One of the characters is in an interesting predicament: she's just returned from a long tour overseas with the WRNS, and isn't sure she's ready to settle down with her fiance who has spent the war looking after the farm. Maybe this will be a plot point? It's early yet.
What I Plan to Read Next
Remember my brother, who gave me back my own books as a Christmas present and mumbled something about my other present being on its way? I had completely forgotten about that other present, so when an alarmingly massive package from Amazon appeared on my doorstep, I thought, "Why would I buy something this enormous?" and when I opened it, I was no less confused. I didn't remember buying The Complete Annotated Sherlock Holmes, but it is exactly the sort of thing I would impulse-buy at three in the morning in a fit of false productivity and existential confusion, so I just assumed that's what had happened until I opened it and saw the sales slip with my brother's name on it. So it looks like there might be some Holmes re-reads in my near future.
What I've Finished Reading
Scales of Justice was pretty middle-of-the road Marsh, with a low-key investigation of a grisly murder. There was quite a lot of buildup regarding a shameful village secret, which made it even more disappointing when [Spoiler redacted until I figure out spoiler cuts on DW]. Maybe that's why the characters felt like such a Standard Mystery Assortment (Village Edition) even though they weren't exactly. The deciding clues are almost all fish-related, with lots of attention to whether a particular cat ate a particular fish. This makes for an interesting stab at a Special Topics Mystery but left me with the taste of fish in my mouth -- another subconscious reason not to like it as much? -- and doesn't have the bite of Marsh's theater and art-world mysteries.
thisbluespirit, you will be happy to hear that this book contains [Spoiler redacted], and not one but TWO peripheral romances for the TV adaptation to torpedo. Also: I got two more Margery Allinghams from the library. I KNOW, but The Tiger in the Smoke was recommended to me long, long ago as Allingham's best, so I wanted to make sure I read it before I left the Allinghamverse behind. Feel free to skip the results.
Coroner's Pidgin was a perfectly enjoyable period piece. It has a terrific premise (society matron finds a dead woman in her famous son's bed, thinks, "This won't do at all," and immediately engages Lugg to help her move the body to a less suspicious location) that blossoms into a complicated wartime smuggling plot. It all holds together pretty well and there's some great anxious end-of-the-world atmosphere to go with the racing around the countryside in search of stolen treasures and corpses. There's a faint but distinct Homecoming of Odysseus motif. It's all right!
Tiger in the Smoke is even more atmospheric and bombed-out, and extremely uneven. Someone has been haunting a war widow who is about to remarry by dressing up as her dead husband and sending her indistinct pictures of himself. This leads, somehow or other, to a slew of murders, a treasure hunt, and a manhunt. Along the way there are moments of creepy menace, longer passages of murky confusion, and completely baffling clauses like, "Bill, the effeminate to whom fear was an exitant. . ."
Allingham's policemen are not bad -- I've always liked Stanis Oates, and there's a talented new detective who has some good lines. Her crooks are less successful, and it was probably a mistake to set so much of The Tiger in the Smoke in their company. I can see why a lot of people consider this Allingham's best book: the Significant Fog gets plenty of work to do, the "haunting" idea is wonderfully evocative, and there's an attempt to portray the destructive effects of the war on a wide range of people that is admirable and interesting. The final confrontation between the clergyman and the killer is good -- I think I liked it because it was something Father Brown might have done if Chesterton were willing to let Father Brown get hurt -- and the ending is almost good, or very good in parts but ultimately a little cheap, or just good -- I'm not really sure. Allingham's random sexist asides are back, few and scattered but still noticeable, like a handful of crocuses poking their green heads out of the slush. Bright little random sexist crocuses, hello!
I haven't said anything about Campion because, apart from some vague regret about how much I would have liked a nice Odysseus motif if I cared about Campion a little more, I barely noticed he was there. Some good news: Val is still working, despite the weird posturing of that spineless dominance guy from The Fashion in Shrouds, and the fact that Amanda has had a child apparently means that Allingham is going to stop hitting me over the head with how young she looks. Small mercies are mercies nonetheless.
What I'm Reading Now
Christie's There is a Tide has some similar themes (post-war social upheaval, rationing being a damn nuisance) and is much easier to read. There's an odd prologue in which Poirot turns down some requests that will probably later turn out to be relevant, and then Poirot disappears and we follow some other people around for a while. The formerly comfortable Cloade family is having a terrible time adjusting to the post-war economy. If their rich brother hadn't remarried before he died, they would have gotten all his money, but he did remarry and now all his money is going to his young wife, to be redistributed to the rest of the family after her death. It's too bad the late Mr. Cloade didn't take the time to make the terms of his will less conductive to murder, but we don't always think of these things when we're alive.
The rich brother's widow seems to be a good-hearted but stupid woman who is being manipulated and abused by her brother (a creepy hothead who lives with her). Does this mean she will actually turn out to be a ruthless criminal mastermind? Maybe, maybe not. But wait! Her first husband may not have died at all, which will mean that she has no legal claim on her current dead husband's money and it will all go to her hapless social-upheaval-addled in-laws, to help them put off any further addling for another year or two. One of the characters is in an interesting predicament: she's just returned from a long tour overseas with the WRNS, and isn't sure she's ready to settle down with her fiance who has spent the war looking after the farm. Maybe this will be a plot point? It's early yet.
What I Plan to Read Next
Remember my brother, who gave me back my own books as a Christmas present and mumbled something about my other present being on its way? I had completely forgotten about that other present, so when an alarmingly massive package from Amazon appeared on my doorstep, I thought, "Why would I buy something this enormous?" and when I opened it, I was no less confused. I didn't remember buying The Complete Annotated Sherlock Holmes, but it is exactly the sort of thing I would impulse-buy at three in the morning in a fit of false productivity and existential confusion, so I just assumed that's what had happened until I opened it and saw the sales slip with my brother's name on it. So it looks like there might be some Holmes re-reads in my near future.
