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Murder's Best Friend Monday
Sep. 19th, 2016 12:14 pmArchived from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
I'm sorry to report that HARDMAN #6, Murder's Not an Odd Job left very little impression on me in the end. There's a guy some people are trying to kill and some women and HARDMAN worries about his weight and eventually he and HUMP DAVIS hole up in a shack in the mountains to shoot some people for reasons that weren't clear. HARDMAN has a girlfriend, but he also sleeps with other people, because 1) it's the shock-proof 70s!! and 2) he needs to reassure himself that his aging body is still desirable, poor guy.
I left it on the library's "adopt-a-book" shelf as I came in and when I left the library, it was gone. If no one had picked it up in the course of the afternoon, I meant to take it back and try to figure out some more things, like what actually happened in the plot, but fate decided otherwise. Good night, sweet HARDMAN. I hope your next reader appreciates you a little more.
I'd bought a beautiful first edition of Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh many months ago, in what I thought was good condition. The dust jacket is still fine, and the spine seemed all right when I bought it. But apparently it was only holding out long enough to entice someone to buy it, because as soon as I started reading it, all the glue crumbled away and all of the pages fell out into my lap, like it had just touched down on human roads after three thousand years in fairyland. I've taken a picture of the cover so you can see how nice it looked (it's a little deflated from losing the pages).
Grave Mistake itself is pretty good. I enjoyed the wry spinster playwright (not named Ngaio)'s relationships with her selfish, hypochondriac friend and the friend's much more sensible adult daughter. I guess she can't properly be called a "spinster" now that it's 1978(!) There's some good interrogation in this one, where everyone has a dark secret or two and can't see why it has to come out just because some silly woman got herself murdered. The murder motive was a bit hard to sell, but you can't let a little thing like that spoil your fun. Besides, good motives for murder are just depressing.
Dumb Witness didn't have as much of its title character as I would have liked, but if it were up to me, all books would just be pictures of dogs. That's not true all the time, but it's true now and then. This is a solid but not breathtaking Christie with a good cast and lots of Hastings being stupid but making up for it by being adorable and playing with the dog. And there's this charming slice of backstory:
My heart goes out to you, Random Poisoner Marrying Guy, but where is your sense of self-preservation? Anyway, he doesn't get poisoned (not a spoiler), but his grown children certainly come in for a lot of suspicion when their great-aunt fetches up dead of maybe-poison. Eventually,The twin specters of Evil Foreigners and Bad Blood are neatly sidestepped . There is a happy ending for the dog and that's all that really matters.
What I'm Reading Now
Every time I pick up Photo Finish, the part of my brain that is slow on the uptake expects it to be about horse racing. In fact it has nothing to do with horse racing and is about an opera singer who is plagued by a tabloid photographer before being murdered. Troy is invited to paint her portrait! in beautiful New Zealand! so we are treated to a double dose of New Zealand Scenery and Theatre People. The opera singer has just shelled out a tremendous amount of money to produce a new opera written by her young protege/lover, but the poor guy is so tormented by the knowledge that his opera is actually terrible that he comes on stage, following a perfectly adequate debut in which everyone was being polite and a few people even enjoyed themselves, to apologize for the opera and announce that he wished he'd had the strength of character to withdraw it as soon as he realized it was bad. Oh, opera guy, no. :( I'm afraid this is a terrible impulse I can relate to all too well, though I am sadly lacking in fabulously wealthy patrons with no taste.
The last book in my Mystery Bundle is called something like The First Rule of Hawkins or The Fourth Law of Harris; I have left it at home and am unable to check. It's about a very angry guy who drinks tequila and orange juice out of a jar in public and hates his ex-wife for 1) being obnoxiously saccharine and innocent, and 2) failing to save him with her innocence, which apparently he tried to apply to himself like some kind of dodgy Victorian poultice to soothe his Vietnam (or possibly Korean) war wounds. Does he realize that this was a bad reason to get married? It's not clear. PLEASE MARRY RESPONSIBLY. The guy also has some strong feelings about religion. So far it is all the angst with none of the detection, and it remains to be seen whether it will be good or "interesting" or bad. But it will be a neat trick if I end up sympathizing with this guy after all.
What I Plan to Read Next
Whatever's next in my stack! There's this historical thing called A Conspiracy of Paper that may or may not be good. And Light Thickens, of course. I hope Alleyn doesn't die in the last book. Closure is all very well, but I don't want any. :(
What I've Finished Reading
I'm sorry to report that HARDMAN #6, Murder's Not an Odd Job left very little impression on me in the end. There's a guy some people are trying to kill and some women and HARDMAN worries about his weight and eventually he and HUMP DAVIS hole up in a shack in the mountains to shoot some people for reasons that weren't clear. HARDMAN has a girlfriend, but he also sleeps with other people, because 1) it's the shock-proof 70s!! and 2) he needs to reassure himself that his aging body is still desirable, poor guy.
I left it on the library's "adopt-a-book" shelf as I came in and when I left the library, it was gone. If no one had picked it up in the course of the afternoon, I meant to take it back and try to figure out some more things, like what actually happened in the plot, but fate decided otherwise. Good night, sweet HARDMAN. I hope your next reader appreciates you a little more.
I'd bought a beautiful first edition of Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh many months ago, in what I thought was good condition. The dust jacket is still fine, and the spine seemed all right when I bought it. But apparently it was only holding out long enough to entice someone to buy it, because as soon as I started reading it, all the glue crumbled away and all of the pages fell out into my lap, like it had just touched down on human roads after three thousand years in fairyland. I've taken a picture of the cover so you can see how nice it looked (it's a little deflated from losing the pages).
Grave Mistake itself is pretty good. I enjoyed the wry spinster playwright (not named Ngaio)'s relationships with her selfish, hypochondriac friend and the friend's much more sensible adult daughter. I guess she can't properly be called a "spinster" now that it's 1978(!) There's some good interrogation in this one, where everyone has a dark secret or two and can't see why it has to come out just because some silly woman got herself murdered. The murder motive was a bit hard to sell, but you can't let a little thing like that spoil your fun. Besides, good motives for murder are just depressing.
Dumb Witness didn't have as much of its title character as I would have liked, but if it were up to me, all books would just be pictures of dogs. That's not true all the time, but it's true now and then. This is a solid but not breathtaking Christie with a good cast and lots of Hastings being stupid but making up for it by being adorable and playing with the dog. And there's this charming slice of backstory:
"Remember a case that made rather a stir in the late nineties? Mrs. Varley? Supposed to have poisoned her husband with arsenic. Good-looking woman. Made a big to-do, that case. She was acquitted. Well, Thomas Arundell quite lost his head. Used to get all the papers and read about the case and cut out the photographs of Mrs. Varley. And would you believe it, when the trial was over, off he was to London an asked her to marry him?"
My heart goes out to you, Random Poisoner Marrying Guy, but where is your sense of self-preservation? Anyway, he doesn't get poisoned (not a spoiler), but his grown children certainly come in for a lot of suspicion when their great-aunt fetches up dead of maybe-poison. Eventually,
What I'm Reading Now
Every time I pick up Photo Finish, the part of my brain that is slow on the uptake expects it to be about horse racing. In fact it has nothing to do with horse racing and is about an opera singer who is plagued by a tabloid photographer before being murdered. Troy is invited to paint her portrait! in beautiful New Zealand! so we are treated to a double dose of New Zealand Scenery and Theatre People. The opera singer has just shelled out a tremendous amount of money to produce a new opera written by her young protege/lover, but the poor guy is so tormented by the knowledge that his opera is actually terrible that he comes on stage, following a perfectly adequate debut in which everyone was being polite and a few people even enjoyed themselves, to apologize for the opera and announce that he wished he'd had the strength of character to withdraw it as soon as he realized it was bad. Oh, opera guy, no. :( I'm afraid this is a terrible impulse I can relate to all too well, though I am sadly lacking in fabulously wealthy patrons with no taste.
The last book in my Mystery Bundle is called something like The First Rule of Hawkins or The Fourth Law of Harris; I have left it at home and am unable to check. It's about a very angry guy who drinks tequila and orange juice out of a jar in public and hates his ex-wife for 1) being obnoxiously saccharine and innocent, and 2) failing to save him with her innocence, which apparently he tried to apply to himself like some kind of dodgy Victorian poultice to soothe his Vietnam (or possibly Korean) war wounds. Does he realize that this was a bad reason to get married? It's not clear. PLEASE MARRY RESPONSIBLY. The guy also has some strong feelings about religion. So far it is all the angst with none of the detection, and it remains to be seen whether it will be good or "interesting" or bad. But it will be a neat trick if I end up sympathizing with this guy after all.
What I Plan to Read Next
Whatever's next in my stack! There's this historical thing called A Conspiracy of Paper that may or may not be good. And Light Thickens, of course. I hope Alleyn doesn't die in the last book. Closure is all very well, but I don't want any. :(
