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Scarlet Thread of Murder Monday
Feb. 15th, 2016 03:28 pmArchived from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
There is a Tide goes off an interesting deep end: ( SPOILERS for the entire book )
McNally's Gamble (by Lawrence Sanders) is Upper Class Twit Detection in 1990s Florida, sort of. Archy McNally is the character described in a back-cover blurb as "a raffish combination of Bertie Wooster and Nick Charles," and while it isn't the job of back-cover matter to create realistic expectations, I'm afraid that might be a check no man can cash. Archy's all right. He drinks top-shelf liquor by the gallon, likes food, old movies and anachronistic ties in bright colors, and has a natural talent for stumbling over corpses. I'm not the target audience for his jaunty infidelity or the comedic(?) jealousy of his "Latin femme fatale" girlfriend.
Archy's friends, except for the occasional cop, all seem to occupy a pseudo-Wodehousian world of deliberate anachronism (one of his friends has had his Victoria's Secret catalogs bound in vellum). This is sometimes funny but more often I found myself wishing more had been made of the Palm Beach setting outside all those incongruously dark-paneled whiskey libraries.
The mystery is very weak, but the mystery isn't really the point. It's mostly an experiment in voice, so if you like Archy, the book will be enjoyable, and if you don't, it will be extremely dull. I found Archy theoretically entertaining but not completely successful, which landed me somewhere in the middle. There's an instance of the word "snarky," and some very 90s (and tiresome) jokes about "politically correct" euphemisms, and a few other interesting date markers. Though this is not a Cat Mystery, Sanders' author photo shows him cuddling a cat.
What I'm Not Reading
I finally watched the last episode of S3 of Sherlock. Why did it take so long to get to it? Life and other TV got in the way. It was kind of a mess! There was a dog! Some disjointed and spoiler-filled thoughts are here if you want them.
( In helpful list form! )
What I'm Reading Now
( I felt rather indignant at having two characters whom I had admired treated in this cavalier style )
Sherlock Holmes, the original and still the best. The annotated edition is completely crowded with lengthy, delightfully dorky footnotes. Some of these are descriptions of buildings and streets mentioned in the text, with pictures; some of them are weather reports "proving" that the story took place in 1881 and not 82 as sometimes suggested, quite a lot are fan theories prodding gleefully at all of Conan Doyle's beautiful inconsistencies. (What happened to the bulldog pup that appears in one sentence and never again? Some people theorize that Watson accidentally killed it while moving into 221B, or that it ran off because life with Holmes was too stressful, but that seems unnecessary. Maybe it just led a quiet life and elected to take a nap whenever there was a game afoot).
( More about this book! )
There are lots of early and later non-Paget illustrations, including the very first published drawing of Sherlock Holmes, in which he looks remarkably like Data from Star Trek.
What I'm Reading Next
I'm not sure! Maybe Career of Evil, if everyone else in town has finished reading it. Probably Death of a Fool by Ngaio Marsh.
What I've Finished Reading
There is a Tide goes off an interesting deep end: ( SPOILERS for the entire book )
McNally's Gamble (by Lawrence Sanders) is Upper Class Twit Detection in 1990s Florida, sort of. Archy McNally is the character described in a back-cover blurb as "a raffish combination of Bertie Wooster and Nick Charles," and while it isn't the job of back-cover matter to create realistic expectations, I'm afraid that might be a check no man can cash. Archy's all right. He drinks top-shelf liquor by the gallon, likes food, old movies and anachronistic ties in bright colors, and has a natural talent for stumbling over corpses. I'm not the target audience for his jaunty infidelity or the comedic(?) jealousy of his "Latin femme fatale" girlfriend.
Archy's friends, except for the occasional cop, all seem to occupy a pseudo-Wodehousian world of deliberate anachronism (one of his friends has had his Victoria's Secret catalogs bound in vellum). This is sometimes funny but more often I found myself wishing more had been made of the Palm Beach setting outside all those incongruously dark-paneled whiskey libraries.
The mystery is very weak, but the mystery isn't really the point. It's mostly an experiment in voice, so if you like Archy, the book will be enjoyable, and if you don't, it will be extremely dull. I found Archy theoretically entertaining but not completely successful, which landed me somewhere in the middle. There's an instance of the word "snarky," and some very 90s (and tiresome) jokes about "politically correct" euphemisms, and a few other interesting date markers. Though this is not a Cat Mystery, Sanders' author photo shows him cuddling a cat.
What I'm Not Reading
I finally watched the last episode of S3 of Sherlock. Why did it take so long to get to it? Life and other TV got in the way. It was kind of a mess! There was a dog! Some disjointed and spoiler-filled thoughts are here if you want them.
( In helpful list form! )
What I'm Reading Now
( I felt rather indignant at having two characters whom I had admired treated in this cavalier style )
Sherlock Holmes, the original and still the best. The annotated edition is completely crowded with lengthy, delightfully dorky footnotes. Some of these are descriptions of buildings and streets mentioned in the text, with pictures; some of them are weather reports "proving" that the story took place in 1881 and not 82 as sometimes suggested, quite a lot are fan theories prodding gleefully at all of Conan Doyle's beautiful inconsistencies. (What happened to the bulldog pup that appears in one sentence and never again? Some people theorize that Watson accidentally killed it while moving into 221B, or that it ran off because life with Holmes was too stressful, but that seems unnecessary. Maybe it just led a quiet life and elected to take a nap whenever there was a game afoot).
( More about this book! )
There are lots of early and later non-Paget illustrations, including the very first published drawing of Sherlock Holmes, in which he looks remarkably like Data from Star Trek.
What I'm Reading Next
I'm not sure! Maybe Career of Evil, if everyone else in town has finished reading it. Probably Death of a Fool by Ngaio Marsh.
