Murder, Destroyer of Mondays
May. 8th, 2017 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart. A beautiful young governess gets a job at an isolated French estate, with a glowering disabled man and his wife, a tall drink of cold water. The little boy she’s hired to teach English is distant and wary. One ominous thing after another happens and finally it becomes clear that someone, possibly everyone on the estate, is trying to kill the little boy and pin it on her. A fun, very florid read. The ending was a letdown because I didn’t like the love interest (obnoxious flashing-eyed fast-driving wrist-grabbing aristocrat with no redeeming qualities except “didn’t actually try to kill a little kid, as far as we know”). But it’s not the kind of book where you have to like the love interest in order to have a good time.
What I’m Reading Now
Two stories into The Hound of Death, a short story collection by Agatha Christie. The first and title story is about a spoooky case of religious delusion and coincidence. . . or is it? Unusually for Christie, we never really get an answer. A Belgian nun believes she has the power to summon “the Hound of Death,” a devastating destructive force, and may or may not have caused the abbey to spontaneously combust during the war after it had been commandeered by a large troop of German soldiers. Besides being inconclusive, there’s a touch of science fiction in this story Monsieur, it is not well that a man should come to power before his time. Many centuries must go by ere the world is ready to have the power of death delivered into its hand. . . . Was it the past Sister Marie Angelique saw in her visions of death-dealing technomages, or the future? Here in 1933, it’s both.
“The Red Signal” is a much more straightforward Christie puzzle with an obvious but cruel and clever twist. A man feels a strong sense of foreboding at a party, but it does him no good at all.
What I Plan to Read Next
I've just started Enter Sir John: murder on a quiet street with all the windows going up, and drowsy neighbors complaining about the noise. It's promising so far.
Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart. A beautiful young governess gets a job at an isolated French estate, with a glowering disabled man and his wife, a tall drink of cold water. The little boy she’s hired to teach English is distant and wary. One ominous thing after another happens and finally it becomes clear that someone, possibly everyone on the estate, is trying to kill the little boy and pin it on her. A fun, very florid read. The ending was a letdown because I didn’t like the love interest (obnoxious flashing-eyed fast-driving wrist-grabbing aristocrat with no redeeming qualities except “didn’t actually try to kill a little kid, as far as we know”). But it’s not the kind of book where you have to like the love interest in order to have a good time.
What I’m Reading Now
Two stories into The Hound of Death, a short story collection by Agatha Christie. The first and title story is about a spoooky case of religious delusion and coincidence. . . or is it? Unusually for Christie, we never really get an answer. A Belgian nun believes she has the power to summon “the Hound of Death,” a devastating destructive force, and may or may not have caused the abbey to spontaneously combust during the war after it had been commandeered by a large troop of German soldiers. Besides being inconclusive, there’s a touch of science fiction in this story Monsieur, it is not well that a man should come to power before his time. Many centuries must go by ere the world is ready to have the power of death delivered into its hand. . . . Was it the past Sister Marie Angelique saw in her visions of death-dealing technomages, or the future? Here in 1933, it’s both.
“The Red Signal” is a much more straightforward Christie puzzle with an obvious but cruel and clever twist. A man feels a strong sense of foreboding at a party, but it does him no good at all.
What I Plan to Read Next
I've just started Enter Sir John: murder on a quiet street with all the windows going up, and drowsy neighbors complaining about the noise. It's promising so far.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 02:58 pm (UTC)The love interest did not make much of an impression on me either way. Perhaps once they are no longer thrown together by Peril, he and the heroine will go their separate ways and she will find a new less wrist-grabby lover.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 05:18 pm (UTC)I liked the Wristy McGrabberson plot in that it added to the heroine's sense of not knowing who to trust and having to question everything - but Wristy himself, ugh. I agree about the house and the escape through the woods! and the murder plot was actually pretty clever, which made it creepier -- well, the shot in the woods plot might have gotten them into some trouble, and the attempt to pin it on the governess was probably too risky, but just quietly breaking parts of the house so that the little boy can have a tragically unexpected accident? That's good murder planning! They might even have gotten away with it, if they hadn't accidentally hired a protagonist as their governess/patsy.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 05:14 pm (UTC)As far as I can gather, this seems the general measure of acceptability in a marriage candidate in this sort of genre novel. As long as you are not the murderer, you can be whatever kind of bastard you like and the heroine will happily marry you, because that is the way of the world of women running away from buildings in flowy gowns while looking scared. (It doesn't correpond to this world, which fails in regular numbers of women in flowy nightgowns fleeing mildly ominous buildings.) (I say this by osmosis and looking with fascination at covers, and then being disappointed at them not being set in the 19th C or earlier.)
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 05:32 pm (UTC)As far as I know the only reasons for setting it in the mid-20thC instead of in a misty Gothic past are: 1) Wristy grabs his way into the heroine's life by nearly killing her with his snazzy motorcar, which he could do just as easily with a horse or whatever, and 2) so that everyone can make Jane Eyre references all the time.
no subject
Date: 2017-05-08 05:41 pm (UTC)This is my problem with Mary Stewart et al. I pick it up, it's not set in the 18th/19th C, and I haven't got time for gothic plots and wrist grabbers unless they're historical! 70s guys are just terrible and don't even wear Regency outfits to make up for it. (My standards are inconsistent and fairly low in some things.) But I like the pictures of ladies running away from sinister houses! They should just do it further back in time.
and 2) so that everyone can make Jane Eyre references all the time.
Seems legit. :-)