Return of the Son of Murder Monday
Jul. 17th, 2017 08:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bI'm back home and almost through the busy season, so hopefully this will be the last useless placeholder for a while.
I didn't actually finish reading anything this week, either! I did have the opportunity to attend an old-school Sherlockian meetup, which was a lot of fun. Highlights of the event included: a summary of "Silver Blaze" composed entirely of clickbait headlines and a guy getting summarily shouted down for trying to make an analogy to his other fandom, Hannibal.
I took home five copies of The Serpentine Muse "a quarterly publication of The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes." This is a zine of about twenty pages with club and fandom news, light verse, speculations on the fates of minor characters, commentary and criticism both earnest and facetious (the latter tending to culminate in a pun of some kind) and toasts to various character categories and characters, Irene Adler and the milk-drinking snake being clear favorites.
One of the most interesting articles was a brief summary of the case of Mary Ann Cotton, a real woman who poisoned between 15 and 20 people with arsenic over a period of twenty years. The author suggests that this is "the most winning woman [Holmes] ever knew" who "was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money," though it appears Cotton was only convicted of one murder and probably committed more than three.
The Listerdale Mystery (a short story collection) was waiting for me when I arrived home last night; I've only read the title story so far, notable for a greater density of snobbery than usual for Christie (the protagonist is a victim of "genteel poverty" who dreads having to share a roof with "fellow-lodgers who always seem to be half-castes") and half the second story, "Philomel Cottage," which is nicely creepy in a mundane way.
ETA forosprey_archer: this genuine fanfiction by Dorothy Sayers (with illustration), in case you haven't seen it already.
I didn't actually finish reading anything this week, either! I did have the opportunity to attend an old-school Sherlockian meetup, which was a lot of fun. Highlights of the event included: a summary of "Silver Blaze" composed entirely of clickbait headlines and a guy getting summarily shouted down for trying to make an analogy to his other fandom, Hannibal.
I took home five copies of The Serpentine Muse "a quarterly publication of The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes." This is a zine of about twenty pages with club and fandom news, light verse, speculations on the fates of minor characters, commentary and criticism both earnest and facetious (the latter tending to culminate in a pun of some kind) and toasts to various character categories and characters, Irene Adler and the milk-drinking snake being clear favorites.
One of the most interesting articles was a brief summary of the case of Mary Ann Cotton, a real woman who poisoned between 15 and 20 people with arsenic over a period of twenty years. The author suggests that this is "the most winning woman [Holmes] ever knew" who "was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money," though it appears Cotton was only convicted of one murder and probably committed more than three.
The Listerdale Mystery (a short story collection) was waiting for me when I arrived home last night; I've only read the title story so far, notable for a greater density of snobbery than usual for Christie (the protagonist is a victim of "genteel poverty" who dreads having to share a roof with "fellow-lodgers who always seem to be half-castes") and half the second story, "Philomel Cottage," which is nicely creepy in a mundane way.
ETA for
osprey_archer: this genuine fanfiction by Dorothy Sayers (with illustration), in case you haven't seen it already.
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Date: 2017-07-18 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-18 05:07 pm (UTC)Of course Peter will completely fail to absorb the true moral of the kitten story, which is "make your own damn bed."
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Date: 2017-07-18 05:54 pm (UTC)Wee!Alleyn's exasperation is visible from this side of the internet. <3
That story is 100% adorable, though. It's reminding me again of my folly in giving all my Sayers away, because maybe it would be readable to me now? (I didn't mean to exactly, I just gave them all to my housemate, and while it was a genuine giving, at that point there was no immediate sign of her moving out any time in the next twenty years.)
The Serpentine Muse also sounds excellent. I do love things tha focus on minor characters, as we all know by now.
(I have been reading Thirteen Guests by J. Jefferson Farjeon of late. I don't know quite what I made of it, but it was lively enough and had an assorted houseparty set-up. I always use you as an excuse in my mind when I buy these things in charity shops. (But it's okay, I never blame you if it doesn't work out. I just feel it is clearly my duty.)
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Date: 2017-07-18 07:22 pm (UTC)Minor characters are the best characters. <3 And Thirteen Guests sounds right up my lane; I'll have to put it somewhere near the middle of the infinite TBR.
(I don't know why I find it so funny that people keep going to these fatal houseparties. You just never imagine it could happen to you!)
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Date: 2017-07-18 08:37 pm (UTC)I don't know why I find it so funny that people keep going to these fatal houseparties. You just never imagine it could happen to you!
To be fair, one of the guests has no wish to be there; he just happened to fall off a train and be taken in on the wrong weekend.
Poor old Allers. School is bad enough without some kid running after you all the time trying to impress you with Gilbert and Sullivan references and unconvincingly described feats of athleticism. At least an actual millstone would be quiet.
The police force was no doubt a welcome relief.
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Date: 2017-07-18 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-18 07:10 pm (UTC)JOLLY OLD ALLERS does not, as far as I can recall, have a canonical schoolboy nickname, but Wimsey does (or maybe deuterocanonical, idk; Sayers is her own most prolific fanficcer). It's Flim, short for Flimsy. It rhymes and describes!
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Date: 2017-07-18 07:15 pm (UTC)Wimsey may have been the only person to ever use this nickname and possibly thought it showed that he and Alleyn had a bond. Alleyn, on the other hand, does not remember (if he ever knew) that Wimsey's nickname used to be Flim.
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Date: 2017-07-18 09:30 pm (UTC)Wimsey may have been the only person to ever use this nickname and possibly thought it showed that he and Alleyn had a bond.
Hah! Undoubtedly.