Mediocrities of Murder Monday
Begun recently: Agatha Christie's An Overdose of Murder is not bad. A dentist apparently shoots himself in the middle of the work day, but why would he do that? Hypothesis: He probably wouldn't? So far there is not much to say about this book except it has lots of Poirot being Poirot. This is not always the most important thing in a Poirot book, but sometimes it is. Here it's too early to tell.
And. . . another Margery Allingham? I was going to take a break, but The Case of the Late Pig is super short and enough of a departure (surprise first-person narrator! Sudden mysterious death of a childhood bully!) to be interesting. It's ok so far. The first-person narration makes less of a difference than you might expect. I still find Albert Campion somehow simultaneously boring and annoying. But it took me forever -- well, about five books? to warm to Inspector Alleyn, and he had fewer disadvantages to overcome, so I figure Albert Campion deserves another book or two to sort himself out. I am sorry to say that he suffers from the same difficulty with intrusive dialogue tags as his author.
Well, and part of me is just mad that M. Lugg is not the protagonist, given that his background and attitudes are approx. 50 times more interesting than Campion's at any given moment. Lugg has a background, for one thing. I'm not sure, but I suspect that Campion's pseudonymous Mystery Posho thing, and the resulting lack of a stable friends-and-family cohort, is part of what's causing my eyes to keep sliding off the page. This might improve in the future and it might not. On the other hand, I would probably enjoy reading about an ex-burglar valet who draws on his experience to solve crimes despite the interference of an overbearing employer who thinks he's a detective. Maybe that's what I am reading? Whatever it is, it's not quite sticking together.
Late Pig's premise is good, and even promises some character development for Campion: the dreaded bully of his school days turns up in the obituaries; Campion goes to the funeral and sees him buried; a few days later, the same man turns up in another town, newly murdered. What's going on? I guess we'll find out.
I finished Head of a Traveler, which was a mixed bag. It has decent bones as a mystery story, but it's fleshed out badly. Maybe because the writing is technically smoother, I expect more? But no, I think it's just a little sloppy, particularly about character motivations and interactions. There's that constant undercurrent of -- probably not misogyny, exactly, but a carelessness about most of the female characters, so that the more we learn about their motivations, the flatter and more indistinct they become.
The Importance of Art conversations are sparse and the investigation is convoluted without gaining much momentum. We learn a little more about Finny, the Significant Dwarf, but spending more time with him just underscores how badly he's handled by the narrative (as a bundle of Grotesque Gothic Disability Tropes rather than a character). There were a couple of pages in the middle where I started to really like Nigel Strangeways -- it's when he has a talk with Vanessa, the teenage daughter of the poet, and tries to help her feel less anxious and responsible for the stress in her family -- but the book's poor handling of a character's rape trauma a chapter or two later kills it again. This was meant to be a similar character moment -- "Helpful Nigel helps a stressed-out young woman with his detectivey intuitiveness and judiciously applied wrist-grabbing!" -- but in execution it was extremely off-putting, and contributes to the overall flattening operation.
Other than that, I have no feelings at all about Nigel Strangeways, which gives me the familiar suspicion that I am missing something. I will probably read one more of these books at least -- sometime. I'm not in any hurry.
Not the best week for murder, except for Poirot, who can always be relied on to be himself no matter how improbable the rest of the world gets.
And. . . another Margery Allingham? I was going to take a break, but The Case of the Late Pig is super short and enough of a departure (surprise first-person narrator! Sudden mysterious death of a childhood bully!) to be interesting. It's ok so far. The first-person narration makes less of a difference than you might expect. I still find Albert Campion somehow simultaneously boring and annoying. But it took me forever -- well, about five books? to warm to Inspector Alleyn, and he had fewer disadvantages to overcome, so I figure Albert Campion deserves another book or two to sort himself out. I am sorry to say that he suffers from the same difficulty with intrusive dialogue tags as his author.
Well, and part of me is just mad that M. Lugg is not the protagonist, given that his background and attitudes are approx. 50 times more interesting than Campion's at any given moment. Lugg has a background, for one thing. I'm not sure, but I suspect that Campion's pseudonymous Mystery Posho thing, and the resulting lack of a stable friends-and-family cohort, is part of what's causing my eyes to keep sliding off the page. This might improve in the future and it might not. On the other hand, I would probably enjoy reading about an ex-burglar valet who draws on his experience to solve crimes despite the interference of an overbearing employer who thinks he's a detective. Maybe that's what I am reading? Whatever it is, it's not quite sticking together.
Late Pig's premise is good, and even promises some character development for Campion: the dreaded bully of his school days turns up in the obituaries; Campion goes to the funeral and sees him buried; a few days later, the same man turns up in another town, newly murdered. What's going on? I guess we'll find out.
I finished Head of a Traveler, which was a mixed bag. It has decent bones as a mystery story, but it's fleshed out badly. Maybe because the writing is technically smoother, I expect more? But no, I think it's just a little sloppy, particularly about character motivations and interactions. There's that constant undercurrent of -- probably not misogyny, exactly, but a carelessness about most of the female characters, so that the more we learn about their motivations, the flatter and more indistinct they become.
The Importance of Art conversations are sparse and the investigation is convoluted without gaining much momentum. We learn a little more about Finny, the Significant Dwarf, but spending more time with him just underscores how badly he's handled by the narrative (as a bundle of Grotesque Gothic Disability Tropes rather than a character). There were a couple of pages in the middle where I started to really like Nigel Strangeways -- it's when he has a talk with Vanessa, the teenage daughter of the poet, and tries to help her feel less anxious and responsible for the stress in her family -- but the book's poor handling of a character's rape trauma a chapter or two later kills it again. This was meant to be a similar character moment -- "Helpful Nigel helps a stressed-out young woman with his detectivey intuitiveness and judiciously applied wrist-grabbing!" -- but in execution it was extremely off-putting, and contributes to the overall flattening operation.
Other than that, I have no feelings at all about Nigel Strangeways, which gives me the familiar suspicion that I am missing something. I will probably read one more of these books at least -- sometime. I'm not in any hurry.
Not the best week for murder, except for Poirot, who can always be relied on to be himself no matter how improbable the rest of the world gets.