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What I've Finished Reading
( Clutch of Constables and When in Rome )
Both these books were a lot of fun, for the most part. Marsh's apparent dislike of old ladies who are doing old-ladyhood wrong is a little strong in both, but that can't be helped at this point. The impeccable British-Ethiopian doctor in Constables provided an opportunity for the villains to do some racist puppy-kicking, something I'm not super fond of, but it could have been a lot worse.
What I'm Reading Now
Unlike Poirot, who can feel himself growing old as the present reels endlessly away beneath him, Alleyn never seems to age at all. That is, he gets a promotion every couple of books, and somewhere in there his son grew up enough to take trips on his own and have a "best girl," and every now and then (much more so in the past few books than before) someone will remember an old case and say, "Why, that must be twenty years ago!" But no one ever mentions how old he is, and he doesn't talk about it (he wouldn't, I guess), and everyone in the story reacts to him as if he were still the blandly dashing fortysomething of the 1930s. In Tied Up in Tinsel, for example, the Difficult Ingenue (who, as a representative of her generation, is involved with experimental nude theatre and says "you know" too much) makes a "dead set" at him and coos to Troy about how "simply the mostest" he is. Is he supposed to be literally eighty here, as the text keeps hinting with its references to past cases and how long ago they were, or still forty, or somewhere in between? It doesn't really matter. Alleyn is what he always was, only now. There's no hint of melancholy in his Detective Stasis -- not yet, anyway.
Tied Up in Tinsel is another of these good but slightly muted late Marshes. Like A Clutch of Constables, it begins with Troy on her own -- this time, she's painting an eccentric subject at his house over Christmas, where she learns how he solved the "servant problem" by staffing his old-school mansion entirely with murderers! Murderers of "the right sort," he explains -- those who killed once under extraordinary circumstances unlikely to be repeated -- are the safest kind of convict to have around the house, and ex-cons make for grateful and cheap labor! Can this brilliant plan possibly backfire?? Actually, I'm pretty sure the half-dozen household murderers are a blind and the real killer will turn out to be someone else.
I'm enjoying the increased frequency of Troy-centric books. You can always pretty much tell what's going to happen in a Troy-centric book: Troy will be dryly observant about some non-Troy characters, there will be some plausible-sounding technical musing about painting, Troy will be brought up short by the same four or five unanswerably ignorant questions from non-specialists and think something scathing, eventually murder will rescue her from the burden of being polite to her admirers (but not for at least a hundred pages!) and Alleyn will show up to be awkward and adorable for ten seconds before he gets down to genre business -- but it's always neatly done and entertaining.
What I Plan to Read Next
The sequel to The Last Detective, if it ever comes back to the library, plus whatever's next in the Marsh queue. Possibly also (or instead) The Gentle Axe, that Porfiry Petrovich mystery I mentioned a while back.
What I've Finished Reading
( Clutch of Constables and When in Rome )
Both these books were a lot of fun, for the most part. Marsh's apparent dislike of old ladies who are doing old-ladyhood wrong is a little strong in both, but that can't be helped at this point. The impeccable British-Ethiopian doctor in Constables provided an opportunity for the villains to do some racist puppy-kicking, something I'm not super fond of, but it could have been a lot worse.
What I'm Reading Now
Unlike Poirot, who can feel himself growing old as the present reels endlessly away beneath him, Alleyn never seems to age at all. That is, he gets a promotion every couple of books, and somewhere in there his son grew up enough to take trips on his own and have a "best girl," and every now and then (much more so in the past few books than before) someone will remember an old case and say, "Why, that must be twenty years ago!" But no one ever mentions how old he is, and he doesn't talk about it (he wouldn't, I guess), and everyone in the story reacts to him as if he were still the blandly dashing fortysomething of the 1930s. In Tied Up in Tinsel, for example, the Difficult Ingenue (who, as a representative of her generation, is involved with experimental nude theatre and says "you know" too much) makes a "dead set" at him and coos to Troy about how "simply the mostest" he is. Is he supposed to be literally eighty here, as the text keeps hinting with its references to past cases and how long ago they were, or still forty, or somewhere in between? It doesn't really matter. Alleyn is what he always was, only now. There's no hint of melancholy in his Detective Stasis -- not yet, anyway.
Tied Up in Tinsel is another of these good but slightly muted late Marshes. Like A Clutch of Constables, it begins with Troy on her own -- this time, she's painting an eccentric subject at his house over Christmas, where she learns how he solved the "servant problem" by staffing his old-school mansion entirely with murderers! Murderers of "the right sort," he explains -- those who killed once under extraordinary circumstances unlikely to be repeated -- are the safest kind of convict to have around the house, and ex-cons make for grateful and cheap labor! Can this brilliant plan possibly backfire?? Actually, I'm pretty sure the half-dozen household murderers are a blind and the real killer will turn out to be someone else.
I'm enjoying the increased frequency of Troy-centric books. You can always pretty much tell what's going to happen in a Troy-centric book: Troy will be dryly observant about some non-Troy characters, there will be some plausible-sounding technical musing about painting, Troy will be brought up short by the same four or five unanswerably ignorant questions from non-specialists and think something scathing, eventually murder will rescue her from the burden of being polite to her admirers (but not for at least a hundred pages!) and Alleyn will show up to be awkward and adorable for ten seconds before he gets down to genre business -- but it's always neatly done and entertaining.
What I Plan to Read Next
The sequel to The Last Detective, if it ever comes back to the library, plus whatever's next in the Marsh queue. Possibly also (or instead) The Gentle Axe, that Porfiry Petrovich mystery I mentioned a while back.
