(no subject)
Well, there's hope. It snowed a little last night and when I went to sweep off the steps, there was NND's four year old coming to do it for me. Did a reasonable job too, though part of it might have been delaying tactics to avoid kindergarten.
Last finished?
Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders
-- oh John Dickson Carr, what hast thou wrought? There's locked room mysteries and then there's contrived unlikely tortuous locked room mysteries with unfollowable MOs, and this is one of the latter, *clearly* an attempt to do JDC in Japanese. What a good thing I decided not to get him in his native language. The Inugami Curse was actually OK, but I need reassurance that his other titles aren't Carr pastiches.
Reading now?
Ovidia Yu, The Betel Nut Tree Murders
-- I'm afraid I find these slow. Plucky girl detective wants to be stationed whetever a murder has taken place so she can observe the suspects, weary police chief wants her not to. Prefer Auntie Lee because I sympathize more with aging women, especially nosy ones with families.
Hazel Holt, Leonora
-- like Sheila Mallory, say. Though I think I spotted at least one gimmick less than 100 pages in. Never say that Character A finds Character B unplaceably familiar, 'reminds her of someone but can't think who' because the who is nearly always obvious. Though Holt then subverts the trope when Sheila meets a woman who looks unplaceably familiar, who then introduces herself as 'used to run the newstand in town', precisely the sort of person who is unplaceably familiar.
Still with 100 Demons, still slow, and trying not to read it till 3 a.m.
Next?
Good question. Yokomizo rattles off a list of famous western locked room mysteries I might want to look at, but none of the English ones are in eform (which I have to use now that snow has begun) and all of the French ones (Gaston Leroux) have painful translations.
Last finished?
Yokomizo, The Honjin Murders
-- oh John Dickson Carr, what hast thou wrought? There's locked room mysteries and then there's contrived unlikely tortuous locked room mysteries with unfollowable MOs, and this is one of the latter, *clearly* an attempt to do JDC in Japanese. What a good thing I decided not to get him in his native language. The Inugami Curse was actually OK, but I need reassurance that his other titles aren't Carr pastiches.
Reading now?
Ovidia Yu, The Betel Nut Tree Murders
-- I'm afraid I find these slow. Plucky girl detective wants to be stationed whetever a murder has taken place so she can observe the suspects, weary police chief wants her not to. Prefer Auntie Lee because I sympathize more with aging women, especially nosy ones with families.
Hazel Holt, Leonora
-- like Sheila Mallory, say. Though I think I spotted at least one gimmick less than 100 pages in. Never say that Character A finds Character B unplaceably familiar, 'reminds her of someone but can't think who' because the who is nearly always obvious. Though Holt then subverts the trope when Sheila meets a woman who looks unplaceably familiar, who then introduces herself as 'used to run the newstand in town', precisely the sort of person who is unplaceably familiar.
Still with 100 Demons, still slow, and trying not to read it till 3 a.m.
Next?
Good question. Yokomizo rattles off a list of famous western locked room mysteries I might want to look at, but none of the English ones are in eform (which I have to use now that snow has begun) and all of the French ones (Gaston Leroux) have painful translations.