![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The School for Murder Monday
Mar. 21st, 2016 11:22 amArchived from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
My very mixed feelings about Career of Evil didn't actually prevent me from reading the whole thing in about two days. ( A partial selection of mixed feelings, below the cut )
Definitely my least favorite of the three, but will that stop me from putting the next one on pre-order as soon as it becomes available? Reader, it will not.
Also finished: Death of a Fool. Not bad, but the patented Ngaio Marsh Death Performance Reconstruction felt a little tired -- I think the action might just have been too complicated to present clearly while maintaining any kind of suspense. This is another post-war story -- we're up to 1956 in the chronology -- and that aspect of the book is interesting in the ordinary way but not particularly deep or startling. Alleyn is Alleyn, Fox is underappreciated, everyone has a secret or two -- a slightly less than typically excellent Marsh, but still good.
And "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," featuring ( Spoiler! )
What I'm Reading Now
Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey. I meant to get the next Marsh book, Singing in the Shrouds, but the university library stacks keep being moved around due to construction, so I got lost and decided to start on Tey's non-Grant books instead. I love it so far. I've never actually seen a harem anime, but ( now I seem to be reading one? )
There's no sign of a murder yet. Maybe there won't be one? Maybe this is a genre vacation for Tey, and we're all just going to put on our bathing suits and play some lawn tennis and have a couple of sleepovers and call it a day. I think I'd be on board for that. Murder is the worst, after all, and it's been so nice out lately!
Malice by Keigo Higashino. This is a recent translation of a book written in 1998 about the murder of a writer, so it's full of plot-relevant conversations about 90s writing technology -- word processor vs. computer vs. writing in longhand in notebooks, and there is a clever alibi trick with a fax machine. It feels translated -- in that way that's hard to explain; the writing always seems to be stepping gingerly around something -- but that doesn't hurt anything very much. I don't know if I should give too much away about how it's structured, because part of the fun is finding out for yourself, but [spoiler temporarily redacted]
What I Plan to Read Next
I started Champagne for One a while ago, so I should get back to that. It's a Rex Stout story about a murder at a benefit dinner for unwed mothers. And more Annotated Holmes, probably.
What I've Finished Reading
My very mixed feelings about Career of Evil didn't actually prevent me from reading the whole thing in about two days. ( A partial selection of mixed feelings, below the cut )
Definitely my least favorite of the three, but will that stop me from putting the next one on pre-order as soon as it becomes available? Reader, it will not.
Also finished: Death of a Fool. Not bad, but the patented Ngaio Marsh Death Performance Reconstruction felt a little tired -- I think the action might just have been too complicated to present clearly while maintaining any kind of suspense. This is another post-war story -- we're up to 1956 in the chronology -- and that aspect of the book is interesting in the ordinary way but not particularly deep or startling. Alleyn is Alleyn, Fox is underappreciated, everyone has a secret or two -- a slightly less than typically excellent Marsh, but still good.
And "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," featuring ( Spoiler! )
What I'm Reading Now
Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey. I meant to get the next Marsh book, Singing in the Shrouds, but the university library stacks keep being moved around due to construction, so I got lost and decided to start on Tey's non-Grant books instead. I love it so far. I've never actually seen a harem anime, but ( now I seem to be reading one? )
There's no sign of a murder yet. Maybe there won't be one? Maybe this is a genre vacation for Tey, and we're all just going to put on our bathing suits and play some lawn tennis and have a couple of sleepovers and call it a day. I think I'd be on board for that. Murder is the worst, after all, and it's been so nice out lately!
Malice by Keigo Higashino. This is a recent translation of a book written in 1998 about the murder of a writer, so it's full of plot-relevant conversations about 90s writing technology -- word processor vs. computer vs. writing in longhand in notebooks, and there is a clever alibi trick with a fax machine. It feels translated -- in that way that's hard to explain; the writing always seems to be stepping gingerly around something -- but that doesn't hurt anything very much. I don't know if I should give too much away about how it's structured, because part of the fun is finding out for yourself, but [spoiler temporarily redacted]
What I Plan to Read Next
I started Champagne for One a while ago, so I should get back to that. It's a Rex Stout story about a murder at a benefit dinner for unwed mothers. And more Annotated Holmes, probably.
