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The Medium is the Murder Monday
Jan. 25th, 2016 12:55 pmArchived from Livejournal
What I've Just Finished Reading
Third Girl was unexpectedly satisfying. Poirot Meets the Sixties was less jarring than I expected; the constant refrain of Girls These Days being Trouble was a little repetitive, but no more than usual for any Christie motif, and I don't think Poirot is actually any fussier or more judgmental here than he was in the Thirties. Poirot is uniquely suited to an improbably long active life in fiction, because you can count on him not to try to be hip. He knows what he likes and he's going to keep on doing what he likes, because why would he do anything else? (Miss Marple is similarly well-suited to all times and places, though her dominant mode is empathy and self-possession rather than complacency and self-possession). He's an almost completely static character whose stasis is a strength, not a weakness: Poirot may never get new, but he also never gets old. Here, he even learns a little from his mistakes.
Ariadne Oliver has a large and entertaining role in this book. At second glance, the solution is a little bit too neat and too thorough a relief, but it's a good one anyway. There's also a very weird and abrupt last-minute marriage at the very end, the only sour note for me, and so strange and out of nowhere that it barely had time to register.
What I'm Reading Now
Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh -- there is a fly-fishing tie on the spine, an early warning sign that the title will be a fish pun. Further fish puns arrive in the first chapter by way of Mr. Phinn, a cartoonishly eccentric Cat Bachelor who would seem to have wandered in from one of those cat mysteries, if cat mysteries had been invented yet (Have they? Scales of Justice is 1955; I don't actually know when the cat thing got going). So far, we have a conflict over fishing rights, the pursuit of a legendary large fish, a barely-submerged conflict over the local Plummy Colonel having accidentally shot one of Mr. Phinn's cats in an archery mishap, a second wife no one seems to like (for reasons that may or may not be fair, but who knows at this point?) and an unspecified scandal in re: some unspecified past malefaction that is currently being discussed in vague but animated terms in dark-paneled drawing rooms that have seen better days. So far, so good.
Cormoran Strike continues to be the best detective, and to recklessly stump all over town when his knee is already inflamed and he hasn't slept properly. TAKE BETTER CARE OF YOURSELF, STRIKE. :( The Silkworm is great so far: a faded ex-wunderkind novelist has disappeared, taking his latest manuscript with him; the manuscript is a gleefully disgusting, priapic roman a clef with lots of suppurating organs and repulsive but instantly recognizable caricatures, and everyone in "the publishing world" is furious with him (he's probably already dead). The idea that a roman a clef could cause such an uproar -- especially one as grotesque and dreamlike as the manuscript described -- seems a little fanciful, but I don't mind that. It's probably not the real motive? Well, we'll see.
I'm not any less annoyed at the way Matthew (Robin's too-patently scheduled for demolition Jerk Fiance) is being characterized. Because the relationship is clearly scheduled for demolition (presumably to make room for Eventual Robin/Strike Estates, a development about which I have mixed feelings at best), Matthew can do no right and receives no quarter from the narrative. There's plenty of straightforward jerkitude, but also plenty of character moments that could easily be sympathetic -- his insecurity about establishing himself in London, for example -- are presented as unambiguous flaws. Partly this is just the Strike POV being self-serving, but partly it isn't. And I wish Robin weren't so insecure about Strike's approval, either, though I love that she's doing all this work toward becoming an investigator in her own right. But we can't have everything we want all the time, and The Silkworm is entertaining enough to more than make up for all my little peeves. I already have (already had, from the first fifty pages of The Cuckoo's Calling on) enough goodwill toward Strike as a character that there's no telling what I might put up with over the next twenty years.
What I Plan to Read Next
In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon, a short-story collection that is, hopefully, exactly what it says on the tin.
What I've Just Finished Reading
Third Girl was unexpectedly satisfying. Poirot Meets the Sixties was less jarring than I expected; the constant refrain of Girls These Days being Trouble was a little repetitive, but no more than usual for any Christie motif, and I don't think Poirot is actually any fussier or more judgmental here than he was in the Thirties. Poirot is uniquely suited to an improbably long active life in fiction, because you can count on him not to try to be hip. He knows what he likes and he's going to keep on doing what he likes, because why would he do anything else? (Miss Marple is similarly well-suited to all times and places, though her dominant mode is empathy and self-possession rather than complacency and self-possession). He's an almost completely static character whose stasis is a strength, not a weakness: Poirot may never get new, but he also never gets old. Here, he even learns a little from his mistakes.
Ariadne Oliver has a large and entertaining role in this book. At second glance, the solution is a little bit too neat and too thorough a relief, but it's a good one anyway. There's also a very weird and abrupt last-minute marriage at the very end, the only sour note for me, and so strange and out of nowhere that it barely had time to register.
What I'm Reading Now
Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh -- there is a fly-fishing tie on the spine, an early warning sign that the title will be a fish pun. Further fish puns arrive in the first chapter by way of Mr. Phinn, a cartoonishly eccentric Cat Bachelor who would seem to have wandered in from one of those cat mysteries, if cat mysteries had been invented yet (Have they? Scales of Justice is 1955; I don't actually know when the cat thing got going). So far, we have a conflict over fishing rights, the pursuit of a legendary large fish, a barely-submerged conflict over the local Plummy Colonel having accidentally shot one of Mr. Phinn's cats in an archery mishap, a second wife no one seems to like (for reasons that may or may not be fair, but who knows at this point?) and an unspecified scandal in re: some unspecified past malefaction that is currently being discussed in vague but animated terms in dark-paneled drawing rooms that have seen better days. So far, so good.
Cormoran Strike continues to be the best detective, and to recklessly stump all over town when his knee is already inflamed and he hasn't slept properly. TAKE BETTER CARE OF YOURSELF, STRIKE. :( The Silkworm is great so far: a faded ex-wunderkind novelist has disappeared, taking his latest manuscript with him; the manuscript is a gleefully disgusting, priapic roman a clef with lots of suppurating organs and repulsive but instantly recognizable caricatures, and everyone in "the publishing world" is furious with him (he's probably already dead). The idea that a roman a clef could cause such an uproar -- especially one as grotesque and dreamlike as the manuscript described -- seems a little fanciful, but I don't mind that. It's probably not the real motive? Well, we'll see.
I'm not any less annoyed at the way Matthew (Robin's too-patently scheduled for demolition Jerk Fiance) is being characterized. Because the relationship is clearly scheduled for demolition (presumably to make room for Eventual Robin/Strike Estates, a development about which I have mixed feelings at best), Matthew can do no right and receives no quarter from the narrative. There's plenty of straightforward jerkitude, but also plenty of character moments that could easily be sympathetic -- his insecurity about establishing himself in London, for example -- are presented as unambiguous flaws. Partly this is just the Strike POV being self-serving, but partly it isn't. And I wish Robin weren't so insecure about Strike's approval, either, though I love that she's doing all this work toward becoming an investigator in her own right. But we can't have everything we want all the time, and The Silkworm is entertaining enough to more than make up for all my little peeves. I already have (already had, from the first fifty pages of The Cuckoo's Calling on) enough goodwill toward Strike as a character that there's no telling what I might put up with over the next twenty years.
What I Plan to Read Next
In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon, a short-story collection that is, hopefully, exactly what it says on the tin.
