Murder and Rumors of Murder Monday
What I've Finished Reading
The House by the River totally fulfilled all its promises and delivered a suspenseful but ultimately pretty harmless good time. Alison and the undercover detective dig up the Darke patriarch's secret racket, the earl and his daughter realize that they are only being courted as extra protection against scandal if the big insurance scheme fails and back away quickly, Alison's mysteriously deserting husband [spoiler!]turns out to have a wife somewhere or other whom he thought was dead but is really alive, so Alison's fake marriage is invalid and she is free to marry Noel Darke, who has spent a lot of the book unconscious. Also, the mad brother isn't really mad; he just found out about the family business so Pere Darke and his confederates bullied him into doubting his senses. Now that the game is up, he's going to make a full recovery!. Oh, and in the very last paragraph there's a ghost.
Florence Warden is described on this book as "England's Anna Katherine Green," which reminds me that I was supposed to look for something by Anna Katherine Green.
What I'm Reading Now
The first few chapters of The Murder at the Vicarage are perfection itself. This is the first appearance of Miss Jane Marple, whom the vicar-narrator's young wife calls "the worst cat in the village."
"And she always knows every single thing that happens -- and draws the worst inferences from it."
Griselda, as I have said, is much younger than I am. At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.
Everyone's got a secret, but no one's been murdered yet. That state of relative grace is obviously not going to last much longer.
Still reading Murder Up My Sleeve, which is . . . interesting. Gardner's mild cinema-serial pulpiness isn't really my style, and it seems the price you pay for a racially diverse cast of characters in 1937 is that whenever there is a disagreement, all the characters will start talking about the "nature of [their] race." But it moves a lot faster than The Case of the Careless Kitten and the convolutions of the plot are reasonably enjoyable instead of tiring. Philosopher-sleuth Terry Clane's "Oriental" powers of concentration feel very comic-bookish to me, but the comic books probably got them from stuff like this.
What I Plan to Read Next
Either Tana French or more Christie, depending on whether the library has The Seven Dials Mystery. Maybe something else.
The House by the River totally fulfilled all its promises and delivered a suspenseful but ultimately pretty harmless good time. Alison and the undercover detective dig up the Darke patriarch's secret racket, the earl and his daughter realize that they are only being courted as extra protection against scandal if the big insurance scheme fails and back away quickly, Alison's mysteriously deserting husband [spoiler!]turns out to have a wife somewhere or other whom he thought was dead but is really alive, so Alison's fake marriage is invalid and she is free to marry Noel Darke, who has spent a lot of the book unconscious. Also, the mad brother isn't really mad; he just found out about the family business so Pere Darke and his confederates bullied him into doubting his senses. Now that the game is up, he's going to make a full recovery!. Oh, and in the very last paragraph there's a ghost.
Florence Warden is described on this book as "England's Anna Katherine Green," which reminds me that I was supposed to look for something by Anna Katherine Green.
What I'm Reading Now
The first few chapters of The Murder at the Vicarage are perfection itself. This is the first appearance of Miss Jane Marple, whom the vicar-narrator's young wife calls "the worst cat in the village."
"And she always knows every single thing that happens -- and draws the worst inferences from it."
Griselda, as I have said, is much younger than I am. At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.
Everyone's got a secret, but no one's been murdered yet. That state of relative grace is obviously not going to last much longer.
Still reading Murder Up My Sleeve, which is . . . interesting. Gardner's mild cinema-serial pulpiness isn't really my style, and it seems the price you pay for a racially diverse cast of characters in 1937 is that whenever there is a disagreement, all the characters will start talking about the "nature of [their] race." But it moves a lot faster than The Case of the Careless Kitten and the convolutions of the plot are reasonably enjoyable instead of tiring. Philosopher-sleuth Terry Clane's "Oriental" powers of concentration feel very comic-bookish to me, but the comic books probably got them from stuff like this.
What I Plan to Read Next
Either Tana French or more Christie, depending on whether the library has The Seven Dials Mystery. Maybe something else.