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A Method to Your Murder Monday
Oct. 3rd, 2016 12:32 pmArchived from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
The Good Detective by H.R.F. Keating, who was president of the Detection Club from 1985-2000. This is a police story, kind of rough and laddish and also very 90s, with its ecoterrorists and pointed pronunciations of "Ms." Ned French is a CID man who, years ago, bullied a young fanatic into confessing to planting a bomb that killed four people. Now, new information has come to light and the case is being reopened. Since Ned and his supervisor deliberately falsified records to make their interrogation look less torturey, this can only mean trouble for Ned and the CID. Will the crusading lawyer ruin Ned's takedown of a dangerous new crime family with her nosy ways? What does it mean to be. . . a good detective?
( Spoilers ahoy )
What I appreciated: this book doesn't fall into the Law and Order: SVU trap of making its criminals EXTRA SUPER TRIPLE HEINOUS in an attempt to make an emotional case for unscrupulous policing. There are no serial killers or torture dungeons, just some unattractive middle-aged wankers who are out to make a buck and don't care about beating a few guys to death along the way. I don't know if the sordidness is really successful, but it's an honest attempt.
I also appreciated how unabashedly pasted on the sexual tension was. At the first meeting between Crusading Lawyer and (Not Actually) Good Detective, the narrator says, in effect, "Suddenly, there was sexual tension! Ned couldn't figure out why." Their relationship becomes a driving force of the plot, but no one ever does figure out why. Sometimes that's the true mystery.
What I'm Reading Now
I'm excited to be reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, because even though I've been reading Christie off and on since 2014, this is the first Christie, and reading it feels like embarking on a long and important journey. . . OF DEATH. It's a great debut novel, brisker and smarter than The Secret Adversary, which will be Christie No. 2. It's a nice job of misdirection to have Hastings, our affable Jam Watson, announce to his hosts at Styles that he has "always had a secret hankering to be a detective."
Alas, the dream is destroyed once the man himself turns up, now a refugee under the protection of the philanthropic Mrs. Inglethorpe, whose murder is soon to confuse everyone. Poirot is a little more demonstrative here than I remember him from the future, but can you really blame him? He "clasped [Hastings] in his arms and kissed [him] warmly."
The edition is odd - an attractive new paperback with elaborately reproduced handwriting (not handwriting font) for the handwriting parts, but full of typos; about a quarter of the "mon amis" are printed, "Mom ami."
What I Plan to Read Next
More from 1921's most promising debut author, Agatha Christie! I've actually read a couple chapters of A Conspiracy of Paper, too, but I don't have anything to say about it yet.
What I've Finished Reading
The Good Detective by H.R.F. Keating, who was president of the Detection Club from 1985-2000. This is a police story, kind of rough and laddish and also very 90s, with its ecoterrorists and pointed pronunciations of "Ms." Ned French is a CID man who, years ago, bullied a young fanatic into confessing to planting a bomb that killed four people. Now, new information has come to light and the case is being reopened. Since Ned and his supervisor deliberately falsified records to make their interrogation look less torturey, this can only mean trouble for Ned and the CID. Will the crusading lawyer ruin Ned's takedown of a dangerous new crime family with her nosy ways? What does it mean to be. . . a good detective?
( Spoilers ahoy )
What I appreciated: this book doesn't fall into the Law and Order: SVU trap of making its criminals EXTRA SUPER TRIPLE HEINOUS in an attempt to make an emotional case for unscrupulous policing. There are no serial killers or torture dungeons, just some unattractive middle-aged wankers who are out to make a buck and don't care about beating a few guys to death along the way. I don't know if the sordidness is really successful, but it's an honest attempt.
I also appreciated how unabashedly pasted on the sexual tension was. At the first meeting between Crusading Lawyer and (Not Actually) Good Detective, the narrator says, in effect, "Suddenly, there was sexual tension! Ned couldn't figure out why." Their relationship becomes a driving force of the plot, but no one ever does figure out why. Sometimes that's the true mystery.
What I'm Reading Now
I'm excited to be reading The Mysterious Affair at Styles, because even though I've been reading Christie off and on since 2014, this is the first Christie, and reading it feels like embarking on a long and important journey. . . OF DEATH. It's a great debut novel, brisker and smarter than The Secret Adversary, which will be Christie No. 2. It's a nice job of misdirection to have Hastings, our affable Jam Watson, announce to his hosts at Styles that he has "always had a secret hankering to be a detective."
"But really, seriously, I am awfully drawn to it. I came across a man in Belgium once, a very famous detective, and he quite inflamed me. He was a marvellous little fellow. He used to say that all good detective work was a mere matter of method. My system is based on his -- though of course I have progressed rather further."
Alas, the dream is destroyed once the man himself turns up, now a refugee under the protection of the philanthropic Mrs. Inglethorpe, whose murder is soon to confuse everyone. Poirot is a little more demonstrative here than I remember him from the future, but can you really blame him? He "clasped [Hastings] in his arms and kissed [him] warmly."
"Mon ami Hastings!" he cried. "It is indeed mon ami Hastings!"
The edition is odd - an attractive new paperback with elaborately reproduced handwriting (not handwriting font) for the handwriting parts, but full of typos; about a quarter of the "mon amis" are printed, "Mom ami."
What I Plan to Read Next
More from 1921's most promising debut author, Agatha Christie! I've actually read a couple chapters of A Conspiracy of Paper, too, but I don't have anything to say about it yet.
