The Murder's In the Details Monday
Sep. 11th, 2017 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
I bought Trent's Last Case when I was out of town and read it on a plane. It's another now-obscure Detection Club favorite, and to be honest, I expected it to be at least half as disappointing as Enter Sir John. Imagine my surprise when I wasn't disappointed at all! E. C. Bentley's prose can be a little too cluttered and creakily clever - the first chapter suffers from this in particular - and there's a random racist ditty ten pages from the end to remind us that it's 1913 - but overall the story is brisk and fun.
Philip Trent is a gifted young painter/ray of sunshine who's cracked a few cases and thinks he has a head for detection - a nice mix of likable wunderkind and overconfident schadenfreude magnet. He falls instantly in love with the dead man's widow, like you do, but spoils his chance when he deduces (incorrectly!) that she was having an affair with his best murder suspect. Too bad! This is one of those classics that defines a genre by preemptively subverting it. Confronted by one outlandish plot twist after another in the final pages, Trent inaugurates the Golden Age of Detection by declaring it entirely too absurd for a rational human being, and washing his hands of the whole silly business in his first book. Get out while you can, Trent! It only gets sillier from here.
Deadly Nightshade also uncovers an unbelievably convoluted plot, though here the Gothic absurdity doesn't quite undo the grisly sadness of the child murder - or vice versa, for that matter.
What I'm Reading Now
Cards on the Table! which means Ariadne Oliver has arrived, spilling apple cores all over the ground and flatly refusing to learn about Finland. Mrs. Oliver is in fine form from Chapter One, and the plot - an eccentric society troll invites four uncaught murderers and four representatives of law and order to a bridge party, just to see what happens! - is enjoyably batty and artificial. What happens is murder, of course, and our four sleuths are forced to put their largely incompatible heads together to figure out who did it.
What I Plan to Read Next
Dumb Witness is no. 31 in the Great Agatha Christie Publication Order Mega-Read, and after that I might take a small break from Christie and read some other things. I’ve got a brand new anthology called Atlanta Noir, some Helen Reillys, a Raymond Chandler collection, and probably a few more books that aren’t directly in my line of sight right now.
I bought Trent's Last Case when I was out of town and read it on a plane. It's another now-obscure Detection Club favorite, and to be honest, I expected it to be at least half as disappointing as Enter Sir John. Imagine my surprise when I wasn't disappointed at all! E. C. Bentley's prose can be a little too cluttered and creakily clever - the first chapter suffers from this in particular - and there's a random racist ditty ten pages from the end to remind us that it's 1913 - but overall the story is brisk and fun.
Philip Trent is a gifted young painter/ray of sunshine who's cracked a few cases and thinks he has a head for detection - a nice mix of likable wunderkind and overconfident schadenfreude magnet. He falls instantly in love with the dead man's widow, like you do, but spoils his chance when he deduces (incorrectly!) that she was having an affair with his best murder suspect. Too bad! This is one of those classics that defines a genre by preemptively subverting it. Confronted by one outlandish plot twist after another in the final pages, Trent inaugurates the Golden Age of Detection by declaring it entirely too absurd for a rational human being, and washing his hands of the whole silly business in his first book. Get out while you can, Trent! It only gets sillier from here.
Deadly Nightshade also uncovers an unbelievably convoluted plot, though here the Gothic absurdity doesn't quite undo the grisly sadness of the child murder - or vice versa, for that matter.
What I'm Reading Now
"I've written thirty-two books by now and of course they're all exactly the same really, as M. Poirot seems to have noticed - but nobody else has - and I only regret one thing - making my detective a Finn. I don't really know anything about Finns and I'm always getting letters from Finland pointing out something impossible that he's said or done. They seem to read detective stories a good deal in Finland. I suppose it's the long winters with no daylight"
Cards on the Table! which means Ariadne Oliver has arrived, spilling apple cores all over the ground and flatly refusing to learn about Finland. Mrs. Oliver is in fine form from Chapter One, and the plot - an eccentric society troll invites four uncaught murderers and four representatives of law and order to a bridge party, just to see what happens! - is enjoyably batty and artificial. What happens is murder, of course, and our four sleuths are forced to put their largely incompatible heads together to figure out who did it.
What I Plan to Read Next
Dumb Witness is no. 31 in the Great Agatha Christie Publication Order Mega-Read, and after that I might take a small break from Christie and read some other things. I’ve got a brand new anthology called Atlanta Noir, some Helen Reillys, a Raymond Chandler collection, and probably a few more books that aren’t directly in my line of sight right now.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-11 04:52 pm (UTC)She may be my favorite Poirot side character. Yes, even more than Hastings or Miss Lemon. She's just so delightfully cranky!
Also, Trent's Last Case sounds delightful. I love detectives who deduce things incorrectly sometimes! Does he end up figuring it all out, despite attempting to wash his hands of this whole detective business?
no subject
Date: 2017-09-11 10:56 pm (UTC)Trent figures nothing out. He only learns the truth by way of a last-minute confession, and it's implied that he could not have figured out the truth by any other means given his plan of attack. It's totally delightful.
Failed detection = the best detection??
no subject
Date: 2017-09-11 04:59 pm (UTC)Ariadne is always great! If you're going to write a self-insert (ish), it's definitely the way to do it. :-)
no subject
Date: 2017-09-11 11:17 pm (UTC)From the minute she shows up at the murder party, Cards on the Table is such a gold mine of great Ariadne moments. I probably shouldn't wish she were in every book, BUT I DO.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-12 02:08 pm (UTC)Dumb Witness is the doggy one isn't it? I'm glad you're having murder fun!(!).
no subject
Date: 2017-09-13 07:15 pm (UTC)Remarkably, or maybe not remarkably at all, Trent manages to Get the Girl anyway. It only needed a passionate declaration + apology! Since he's not a detective any more, they don't even have to worry about corpses turning up at the engagement party.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-14 02:54 pm (UTC)It's got Hastings making friends with a dog and that's all I want out of life. What else more could anyone ask for:D
Hurrah, although I am not hopeful for corpses not turning up at the engagement party.