The fencing Master, or the 200 Escudo Bust
In the past, people have set themselves great tasks to prove their worth, impress others and hopefully make some money in the process. Thus 19th century Americans opened up the West, finding new sources of fur and allowing us all to marvel at the wonders of the Oregan coast; thus the St. Paul’s was built, allowing us all to pay ridiculously high fees to gawp at it; thus I in a fit of optimism struggled to the end of The Fencing Master.
The plot follows grizzled old maitre des armes Don Jaime Astarloa, whose code of conduct and sense of honour are as unfashionable, with as little room for manoeuvre as a disco in a luggage rack. Twice foiled in love in his youth, our ancient maestro is resigned to growing old, teaching rich men’s sons how to fence and collecting a group friends about him who are described by the Times as “Seedy”, but really serve only as a device to win the “Most Clichéd Side Characters” Award. There’s the monarchist and the communist who spend their days arguing with each other, but are secretly friends, there’s the maudlin poet who is in love with another man’s wife, and they all play out their hackneyed little dramas in front of Don Jaime, presumably to give him something to sneer at.
Into his life drops Donya Adela de Otero, wanting to learn the secret of Don Astarloa’s “unstoppable thrust.” A “Mysterious woman”, mysteriously unknown, with a Mysterious Past, living mysteriously on her own, she is mysteriously beautiful with violet eyes.
It was here that my dwindling interest died and could not be rekindled, no matter how hard I blew on its rapidly cooling ashes. I don’t know how and when the description “Violet eye’d” became a cliché, but it did and there’s no going back from it. Whenever someone wants to suggest a character strays slightly from the norm, or has more to them than you might suspect, or is, god help us, mysterious, they describe them as having violet eyes. The rest of the novel past in a predictable stream of obvious candidates for murder getting knocked off, flash backs to Astarloa’s past loves, plot "twists" that would confuse all concussed ducklings of below average intelligence and, somewhere towards the end, a perfunctory back story and really pointless sex scene.
A word on our heroine. While she had the potential to be a moderately interesting femme fatale characature, somehow along the way she become a sort of homicidal bust, whose primary purpose was to inflame Astarloa's withered old man-foil.
There are some pretty good bits. There are occasional sparks of inspired description. Mind you, these are mainly in the attention to the details in describing fencing attacks.
To be honest, that isn’t really a selling point in a novel. In a treatise on fencing, yes. In a novel, even if said novel is superficially fencing-themed, no.
The main point where this book fails is it sets itself up as a period whodunit, and then tells you whodunit about 100 pages from the dénouement, and no amount of half-arsed attempts to throw the reader off the scent are going to help.
In short, if you like Whodunits that gradually draw you in, and hold you with the detective character ‘til the last page, giving you just enough information for you to grip you, but not enough that you can guess the end, then go off and read an Agatha Christie or something, because this is a murder mystery for people who don’t like murder mysteries. You spend your time feeling one step ahead of the main character, and so at the conclusion you can smile smugly and say “I knew that was going to happen” and then go back to complaining about how unrealistic Eastenders is.
The plot follows grizzled old maitre des armes Don Jaime Astarloa, whose code of conduct and sense of honour are as unfashionable, with as little room for manoeuvre as a disco in a luggage rack. Twice foiled in love in his youth, our ancient maestro is resigned to growing old, teaching rich men’s sons how to fence and collecting a group friends about him who are described by the Times as “Seedy”, but really serve only as a device to win the “Most Clichéd Side Characters” Award. There’s the monarchist and the communist who spend their days arguing with each other, but are secretly friends, there’s the maudlin poet who is in love with another man’s wife, and they all play out their hackneyed little dramas in front of Don Jaime, presumably to give him something to sneer at.
Into his life drops Donya Adela de Otero, wanting to learn the secret of Don Astarloa’s “unstoppable thrust.” A “Mysterious woman”, mysteriously unknown, with a Mysterious Past, living mysteriously on her own, she is mysteriously beautiful with violet eyes.
It was here that my dwindling interest died and could not be rekindled, no matter how hard I blew on its rapidly cooling ashes. I don’t know how and when the description “Violet eye’d” became a cliché, but it did and there’s no going back from it. Whenever someone wants to suggest a character strays slightly from the norm, or has more to them than you might suspect, or is, god help us, mysterious, they describe them as having violet eyes. The rest of the novel past in a predictable stream of obvious candidates for murder getting knocked off, flash backs to Astarloa’s past loves, plot "twists" that would confuse all concussed ducklings of below average intelligence and, somewhere towards the end, a perfunctory back story and really pointless sex scene.
A word on our heroine. While she had the potential to be a moderately interesting femme fatale characature, somehow along the way she become a sort of homicidal bust, whose primary purpose was to inflame Astarloa's withered old man-foil.
There are some pretty good bits. There are occasional sparks of inspired description. Mind you, these are mainly in the attention to the details in describing fencing attacks.
To be honest, that isn’t really a selling point in a novel. In a treatise on fencing, yes. In a novel, even if said novel is superficially fencing-themed, no.
The main point where this book fails is it sets itself up as a period whodunit, and then tells you whodunit about 100 pages from the dénouement, and no amount of half-arsed attempts to throw the reader off the scent are going to help.
In short, if you like Whodunits that gradually draw you in, and hold you with the detective character ‘til the last page, giving you just enough information for you to grip you, but not enough that you can guess the end, then go off and read an Agatha Christie or something, because this is a murder mystery for people who don’t like murder mysteries. You spend your time feeling one step ahead of the main character, and so at the conclusion you can smile smugly and say “I knew that was going to happen” and then go back to complaining about how unrealistic Eastenders is.