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Murder is the Reason for the Monday
Apr. 10th, 2017 12:56 amCross-posted from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
The Return of the Continental Op is five short stories by Dashiell Hammett , told by and about a nameless operative for the Continental Detective Agency. I really like Hammett’s first person here: short punchy similes, sardonically understated re-statements, “I lied” as dialogue tag. The Op is at his best when he’s castigating criminals, or watching them castigate each other, for being shit at crime. It’s a very specific form of satisfaction. In one story, he gets through twelve perfectly good reasons for why the elaborate set-up was a bad plan from the start before deciding he’s too thirsty to keep going. It usually happens some time after the Op has suffered some bodily trauma, since the Op gets knocked out constantly. Knocked on the head and thrown into the Bay, knocked on the head and beaten half to death, just plain knocked on the head. My Dell paperback edition (complete with crime map on back cover) is falling apart in my hands, and so cheaply printed that some of the pages have a blurry 3-D effect, so I won’t be keeping this one around, but it’s no fault of Dashiell Hammett’s.
Peril at End House was almost too overstuffed with Poirotisms, but what am I talking about? There's no such thing. Is there? Apparently I'm of two minds. On the one hand, it gets laid on a bit thicker in this book than in some of the others. On the other - well, the other hand is just the same sentence with "and it's great!" appended. Hastings and Poirot bicker about breakfast and modernity; Hastings takes great pleasure in describing the peculiarities of his friend to outsiders. This one is fast, fun, and a little crazy, but in the best Agatha Christie tradition rather than the worst. Nick Buckley, the hapless "modern" near-murder victim who charms Hastings and dismays Poirot with her disorderly ways, is a standout character from beginning to end. In the end, the mystery grows so dense that only a fake seance can dispel it. When in doubt, hold a fake seance!
What I'm Reading Now
I've started P. D. James' Death of an Expert Witness. I've read two P.D. James books a while ago, which I admired but didn't quite love - James leans more toward the disquieting end of the puzzle-horror continuum and -- I was about to say I like my murder stories to have less in common with actual murder, but that isn't always the case. I tried to read a couple of other books by James off and on, but wasn't able to keep my attention on them for some reason. I'm guardedly optimistic about this one.
It starts with a late-night call to a forensic pathologist, who reflects briefly on his unhappy middle age before setting off to work. Then the pathologist's daughter reflects a little on her parent's unhappy marriage. That's a lot of unhappiness for the first ten pages, when we haven't even met the corpse yet. But I like this pathologist. He couldn't hack it as a doctor for the living, so he's trying to do his best by the dead.
What I Plan to Read Next
It's all a mystery! Either Christie or not-Christie, depending on whether the library has Thirteen Problems. I keep forgetting to check.
What I've Finished Reading
The Return of the Continental Op is five short stories by Dashiell Hammett , told by and about a nameless operative for the Continental Detective Agency. I really like Hammett’s first person here: short punchy similes, sardonically understated re-statements, “I lied” as dialogue tag. The Op is at his best when he’s castigating criminals, or watching them castigate each other, for being shit at crime. It’s a very specific form of satisfaction. In one story, he gets through twelve perfectly good reasons for why the elaborate set-up was a bad plan from the start before deciding he’s too thirsty to keep going. It usually happens some time after the Op has suffered some bodily trauma, since the Op gets knocked out constantly. Knocked on the head and thrown into the Bay, knocked on the head and beaten half to death, just plain knocked on the head. My Dell paperback edition (complete with crime map on back cover) is falling apart in my hands, and so cheaply printed that some of the pages have a blurry 3-D effect, so I won’t be keeping this one around, but it’s no fault of Dashiell Hammett’s.
Peril at End House was almost too overstuffed with Poirotisms, but what am I talking about? There's no such thing. Is there? Apparently I'm of two minds. On the one hand, it gets laid on a bit thicker in this book than in some of the others. On the other - well, the other hand is just the same sentence with "and it's great!" appended. Hastings and Poirot bicker about breakfast and modernity; Hastings takes great pleasure in describing the peculiarities of his friend to outsiders. This one is fast, fun, and a little crazy, but in the best Agatha Christie tradition rather than the worst. Nick Buckley, the hapless "modern" near-murder victim who charms Hastings and dismays Poirot with her disorderly ways, is a standout character from beginning to end. In the end, the mystery grows so dense that only a fake seance can dispel it. When in doubt, hold a fake seance!
What I'm Reading Now
I've started P. D. James' Death of an Expert Witness. I've read two P.D. James books a while ago, which I admired but didn't quite love - James leans more toward the disquieting end of the puzzle-horror continuum and -- I was about to say I like my murder stories to have less in common with actual murder, but that isn't always the case. I tried to read a couple of other books by James off and on, but wasn't able to keep my attention on them for some reason. I'm guardedly optimistic about this one.
It starts with a late-night call to a forensic pathologist, who reflects briefly on his unhappy middle age before setting off to work. Then the pathologist's daughter reflects a little on her parent's unhappy marriage. That's a lot of unhappiness for the first ten pages, when we haven't even met the corpse yet. But I like this pathologist. He couldn't hack it as a doctor for the living, so he's trying to do his best by the dead.
What I Plan to Read Next
It's all a mystery! Either Christie or not-Christie, depending on whether the library has Thirteen Problems. I keep forgetting to check.
