Is This a Murder I See Before Me Monday

[evelyn_b]

What I've Given Up on For Now

I gave up on The Fifth Law of Hawkins by Charles Durden, the last book in my Mystery Bundle, about thirty pages in. Maybe if the back cover hadn't promised me a narrator full of "undeniable charm," I would have lasted longer. Hawkins' "charm" seems to consist entirely in rude remarks followed by the announcement that

Comments

[osprey_archer]

I can't believe you've finished the Marshes! What will you do next? Where will life be without a steady infusion of Inspector Alleyn's implacability?

I suppose you have enough Christie to keep you going for a while, though, so that's something at least.

I really enjoyed Light Thickens when I read it (although, yes, the *spoiler* is a bit of a disappointing cop-out on the murderer). Is this the one with the child actor who father or grandfather was a murderer - possibly the murderer in The Nursing Home Murders? - and one of the other character goes muttering on about heritable murderous impulses, only it turns out that the child had nothing to do with it?

I remember thinking it was an interesting reversal of some of Marsh's dodgier attitudes about heredity in her early books (which were after all written in the thirties, when dodgy attitudes about heredity were fashionable).

[evelyn_b]

BEREFT is where life will be! Bereft! I thought about putting it off so that I'd still have backup Alleyns in case of emergency, but couldn't convince myself to do it. And Christie will certainly keep me supplied for a while yet.

Is this the one with the child actor who father or grandfather was a murderer - possibly the murderer in The Nursing Home Murders? - and one of the other character goes muttering on about heritable murderous impulses, only it turns out that the child had nothing to do with it?

That's the one! Although I don't think the murder case is connected with the one in TNHM at all; it's a serial killer with a different name and MO. That plotline does seem like a rejection of Hereditary Murder theories.

[liadtbunny]

I guess you haven't done too badly out of your mystery bundle 1 out of 4(?) ain't bad. Charmless and obnoxious sounds a better description.

I hope The Defective Detectives goes well and you don't end up lobbing it across the room.

[evelyn_b]

Two out of six! I didn't finish A Forest of Eyes or Hawkins, finished but didn't understand HARDMAN, finished and enjoyed The Crooknose Mystery and Dead Man's Knock, finished and was ambivalent about Tancredi.

I thought at the start of Hawkins that I would be impressed if I ended up liking the narrator, but I'm not invested enough to wait around and see if it happens.

[liadtbunny]

I almost want to read some HARDMAN just so I can write fic bemoaning how terribly misunderstood he is, woe!

[evelyn_b]

Poor HARDMAN. Not only is he misunderstood in canon (probably), he is even misunderstood on a meta level. I can't exactly say DO IT because I suspect they aren't very good books. But you have a good chance of understanding them better than I did! I don't think they're actually that confusing; I just kept dozing off and suddenly we were in a shootout.

[lost_spook]

It's important to insult as many people as you can, he explains, after the female lead raises an eyebrow at a labored joke about how the Welsh can't spell

Argh, no. Oh dear. Well, at least you had the pleasure of the bundle and some covers and things!

How sad to be at the end of Alleyn, though. For me, anyway; I've really enjoyed following your read through them! ;-)

I suppose in a Macbeth mystery it actually ought to be the mad person who's been muttering about swords (or daggers)? Maybe?

I wish him a long, peaceful, corpse-free retirement in his mysterious eddy of ageless time.

This will never happen. People will just get murdered in front of him in the retirement home. Murder never takes a holiday or retires! Even if authors do.

[evelyn_b]

I wish I could convey to you just how labored the joke is! (I don't have the book anymore). Hawkins has to go out of his way to request that the town name he overhears in passing (not the town he's going to, just a neighboring town) be spelled out for him, specifically so he can make the hilarious and trenchant observation that Welsh orthography is different from English orthography and LOL DIVERSITY INITIATIVES R OUT OF CONTROL AMIRITE? those wacky welsh sure do need to learn to spell! It's very 1990, somehow.

Overall, the bundle was a success! Hawkins at the end was a disappointment, but it was still $2 well spent.

I'm sad to be at the end! I knew I would be, but. . .

I can't help feeling that if anyone ought to be able to escape the Curse of the Detective Who Tries to Retire, it's Alleyn. At least he can get his murder load reduced to one per five years? One a year?

[lost_spook]

Unfortunately, terrible jokes about the Welsh and the Welsh language by the English are for all time and never bode well. (Lighten up, Wales! Why don't you find this stuff funny, we've been practising it on you for at least 500 years?)

It's not a bad price just for a couple of decent books and the pleasure of unwrapping, really. :-)

I can't help feeling that if anyone ought to be able to escape the Curse of the Detective Who Tries to Retire, it's Alleyn. At least he can get his murder load reduced to one per five years? One a year?

True! I'm sure he can manage just the very odd occasion these days, or maybe even mild cases of theft or something, because detectives can so rarely completely retire.

[wordsofastory]

I really like your review of Light Thickens. I was also very disappointed by the resolution of the mystery, but since it's the only Marsh I've read, I didn't know if that was typical of her writing or not. It's nice to know that it's not, and I should read other books by her in the future.

[evelyn_b]

It's not her usual MO, no! There are a couple more, I think, where the solution is in a similar vein, but usually not to the same extent as in LT. Mostly the murderers have the kinds of motives you would want a murderer in a mystery to have.

I hope you do read some more Ngaio Marsh books! I'd love to hear what you think. They're almost all solid and Alleyn is pleasantly competent. I don't recommend starting at the very beginning - Vintage Murder or Artists in Crime are about where the series finds its feet.

Of course, if you read a few more and don't like them, you can give it up with no regrets - the general Marsh pattern doesn't change very much imo.

[wordsofastory]

Thank you for the rec! I'll keep them in mind.

I actually read Light Thickens because I was looking for novels about the process of working backstage and putting on a show, and it did turn out to be very useful in that regard! The mystery was only a secondary consideration.

[a_phoenixdragon]

*HUGS*