tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4992474326494839382024-03-11T01:39:12.329-04:00At the Scene of the CrimePatrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.comBlogger502125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-17279829677916309472020-01-12T13:58:00.000-05:002020-01-12T13:58:50.949-05:00You Want It Darker<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOFChDw9N5UUV8kto4oJUGWEHYOdh16CYpWC-f3mRbn3pRxVLH5n_VpFaJ4sgdoABO3gJv7PtbLxuSY_eCyqQhx5y22yneIyoMoXhvJdFPmkHNa1EMmV_1t8HS0W85JKUnulRl_YJTpdc/s1600/bury+him+darkly+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1360" data-original-width="880" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOFChDw9N5UUV8kto4oJUGWEHYOdh16CYpWC-f3mRbn3pRxVLH5n_VpFaJ4sgdoABO3gJv7PtbLxuSY_eCyqQhx5y22yneIyoMoXhvJdFPmkHNa1EMmV_1t8HS0W85JKUnulRl_YJTpdc/s320/bury+him+darkly+01.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
In the opening pages of John Blackburn’s <i>Bury Him </i>Darkly,
we are introduced to the legend of Sir Martin Railstone. He lived most of his
life in relative obscurity in the 18<sup>th</sup> century. However, late in his
life, he entered an unexpected period of genius, both artistic and scientific.
Rumours swirled that this was due to demonic possession, and many dark stories
have circulated about him ever since. Sir Martin spent the last several years
of his life furiously at work in almost total isolation. Upon his death, he
decreed that all his work from this period be buried with him until the day
that a (very specifically described) ancestor could lay claim to the
inheritance.</div>
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Until then, the Church of England has been entrusted with
the tomb and its contents. Yet due to the scandalous rumours about Sir Martin,
the Church has refused to open the tomb. And now, time is running out. A new
dam will leave Sir Martin’s tomb under hundreds of feet of water. Thus, a group
of his devotees – including a historian, a former Nazi scientist, and a wealthy
industrialist – take it upon themselves to open up the tomb before it is too
late.<br />
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<i>Bury Him Darkly</i> is a book that has been on my shelf
for far too long. John Blackburn is a terrific writer, one whose writing is
colourful and engaging and, for lack of a better word, flows smoothly. Once I decided
I would read this book, I found it very difficult to put down, and I had it
finished within two days.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAR_AXgV-a6hDDNEPk1hk7RJJCMzxWQt_KxB95NzlCk03GVNJ_BzBg73mw41-kR_iIkVVPfs5c8dKtsViJB3-vXzNJrGxflsgTNaMBPxHhwMX_4FZz6uBNgFsKsHLCEDWVIHUNb9e0rc/s1600/bury+him+darkly+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="291" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwAR_AXgV-a6hDDNEPk1hk7RJJCMzxWQt_KxB95NzlCk03GVNJ_BzBg73mw41-kR_iIkVVPfs5c8dKtsViJB3-vXzNJrGxflsgTNaMBPxHhwMX_4FZz6uBNgFsKsHLCEDWVIHUNb9e0rc/s320/bury+him+darkly+02.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
This book is not strictly speaking a mystery, but it is what
I would call “genre-adjacent”. You can make an argument for this being a
mystery, sci-fi, or horror. It incorporates elements from various genres. It opens
up with the murder of an Anglican bishop who was opposed to opening Sir Martin’s
tomb. This sets the plot into motion, and the true nature of the ensuing
treasure hunt is kept under a shroud of mystery. Had Sir Martin truly been possessed
by the devil? Had he gone insane? Was the tomb built to keep would-be treasure
hunters <i>out</i>… or to keep something evil <i>in</i>? Each of the modern-day
treasure hunters has their own idea of what is to be found in Sir Martin’s tomb,
and each is explored in turn.</div>
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The result if a fast-paced, mysterious, and genuinely creepy
tale that spins wildly out of control by the climax. I don’t mean that to be a
criticism but say so in the best possible way. In many ways, this book reminded
me of <a href="https://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/2013/07/there-are-monsters-in-mirkwood.html">George
C. Chesbro’s <i>The Beasts of Valhalla</i></a>: it begins as one type of tale
and, over the course of a wild and fast-paced ride, morphs into another. If you
described the book’s last act to a reader with no context whatsoever, you would
get a concerned look; but if you are there for the whole ride, there is a method
to the madness.</div>
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If you are someone who enjoys sci-fi, horror, and mystery,
and if you are open to imaginative writing, <i>Bury Him Darkly </i>may be a
book for you. I’m not entirely sure whether this was a masterpiece of genre
fiction, but here is what I know: it has been over a year since I had the
chance to read fiction for entertainment. I chose to go with this book and did
not regret the choice in the least. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and, if circumstances
had permitted me to do so, I would have gladly stayed up all night to finish it
one sitting. This was a fun, fast-paced, and brief book with intriguing and
inventive ideas splattered all over every page.</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-15963555132456401122018-10-30T22:40:00.000-04:002018-10-30T22:40:23.927-04:00Baby Bye Bye Bye<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYzUYfQBAGj8Jhc7XQsEg5SIQDSFZn1tizKhfrOGZyn8nZTNrlGtkVcTmjaJ1S3yf35IvrNE_9ygLkABZS8VXZKi_LZKP8CVpiuIbsmfXTuiUju75Etd9UraSizREOt4Cq4U3aQNGw2AY/s1600/kiss+her+goodbye+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="356" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYzUYfQBAGj8Jhc7XQsEg5SIQDSFZn1tizKhfrOGZyn8nZTNrlGtkVcTmjaJ1S3yf35IvrNE_9ygLkABZS8VXZKi_LZKP8CVpiuIbsmfXTuiUju75Etd9UraSizREOt4Cq4U3aQNGw2AY/s1600/kiss+her+goodbye+02.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
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It appeared that Bill Doolan’s death was a suicide. He was
dying of cancer. He had just gotten word from his doctor that he could expect
to live about three more months, and they would be filled with pain. And so,
Doolan put his affairs in order: he even called a cemetery and bought a plot
there. Then, while listening to music in the dark, he shot himself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The medical examiner, the cops, the next of kin... <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everyone</i> agreed this must be what
happened. Everyone, that is except Mike Hammer, who has spent a year away in
Florida, trying to keep a low profile after having gunned down Sal Bonetti, the
sadistic son of a notorious gangster. Mike can’t shake the feeling that
something is off, and so he begins a separate investigation into the death of
his former mentor. Before long, the corpses begin piling up as Mike Hammer
makes his grand return to the streets of New York, dispensing his particular brand
of violent justice…</div>
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This is the first book I’ve read for fun in a long time:
over a year, in fact. While at seminary, most of my reading ends up being
theological in nature (and not exactly suited to this blog). Hence my long
absence. This means that my reviewing skills might be rusty. Please bear with
me.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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I don’t quite know what it is about Mickey Spillane and Mike
Hammer, but they keep drawing me back in for more. I distinctly remember hating
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I, the Jury</i>. I enjoyed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lady, Go Die!</i>, a sequel completed by Max
Allan Collins, a lot more. And once I read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One
Lonely Night</i>, I found that my opinion of Spillane had done a complete 180:
I found in his prose a fascinating kind of rough poetry. There was a visceral quality
to the writing that attracted me despite my repugnance to Mike Hammer’s
morality. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbt9Z4MYYOOxFmTF8mX3r2naEyqrckVzS4V0XCvaTg3Da2tOWQPCTfxequ10hSuDL1vaOPKuYvBUw3FcHmgegZRxj6XFdkPfMdLt4bCWwWnl6dm7NB1HQCi_rAfbVoTSIB-lnCu2Ye6Lc/s1600/kiss+her+goodbye+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbt9Z4MYYOOxFmTF8mX3r2naEyqrckVzS4V0XCvaTg3Da2tOWQPCTfxequ10hSuDL1vaOPKuYvBUw3FcHmgegZRxj6XFdkPfMdLt4bCWwWnl6dm7NB1HQCi_rAfbVoTSIB-lnCu2Ye6Lc/s1600/kiss+her+goodbye+01.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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I’m happy to say that, even though <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kiss Her Goodbye</i> was completed by Max Allan Collins, the writing
remains top-notch quality and reminded me exactly why I came to genuinely enjoy
Spillane’s prose. Despite a note from Collins at the start of the book,
explaining how he pieced two partial manuscripts together, for the most part I
have no idea where Spillane stops writing and where Collins picks up. This is,
quite simply put, a wonderfully written book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I enjoyed the plot quite a bit. Spillane’s plots tend to be labyrinthine
and full of clues pointing to the killer. I also tend to guess who his
criminals are going to be very soon after they are introduced. This held true
once again – I wasn’t surprised by the ultimate destination, but it was such a
wild ride to get there that I enjoyed it from start to finish.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Mickey Spillane was once the most vilified writer in
America, and although his violence is tame by modern standards, I don’t know
whether modern readers will take kindly to Mike Hammer. Heck, I myself continue
to have issues with Hammer’s code of ethics. In fact, one scene about
three-quarters of the way through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kiss
Her Goodbye</i> stands out as particularly disturbing, highlighting just how
much Mike Hammer enjoys killing. I don’t want to get too deep into spoilers
here, but that scene leads to an introspective moment. This is one of the things
I have come to love about Mike Hammer: he’s certainly not a role model, but he
is a profoundly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interesting</i> character.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Overall, I think that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kiss
Her Goodbye </i>is a good read, especially for anyone who is already a fan of Mike
Hammer. It’s a fast-paced read, with a solidly constructed plot and fantastic writing,
the kind of vivid prose I wish I had the imagination to come up with myself. It
was a pleasant change of pace for me, and I’m certain that it won’t be the last
time I reach for a book from this section of my bookshelf.</div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-56467505518432898882017-07-31T13:49:00.001-04:002017-07-31T13:54:04.619-04:00Fantastic Deities and Where to Find Them<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJCsjA29kxyzlzYjAzO1wIesjFyFWby1yVi4bKT57REFx1SAtRzdxNdC2fYri5Qr9nPqeKHMWYXTJXpl-SMV4V-3O6ZKucP2coyHyqMDPQ6g1dXYAZlN8WUCxb5cCi2hJUv6Sg8g0271o/s1600/american+gods+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="387" data-original-width="256" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJCsjA29kxyzlzYjAzO1wIesjFyFWby1yVi4bKT57REFx1SAtRzdxNdC2fYri5Qr9nPqeKHMWYXTJXpl-SMV4V-3O6ZKucP2coyHyqMDPQ6g1dXYAZlN8WUCxb5cCi2hJUv6Sg8g0271o/s320/american+gods+01.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
I have never been very good at approaching my reading
systematically. I will pick up whatever the heck I want to read, whenever I
want to (or am able to). Thus, a look at my to-be-read pile will reveal a
mish-mash of genres, authors, and page counts. Some books are barely longer
than 150 pages, others are well over 1000. Dante’s <i>Divine Comedy</i> is palling around with a bunch of Rex Stout’s Nero
Wolfe novels, and my Paul Halter omnibus can be found next to a Latin edition
of <i>Winnie the Pooh</i>. Sometimes, I pick
up a book that is extremely long, and then it takes me a long time to finish
it. Which means that the review takes a long time to go up. Hence the delay since
my last review. With this word of explanation, I’d like to begin talking about
Neil Gaiman’s <i>American Gods</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But before I do, let me answer the objection: “This is a
crime fiction blog! What on earth are you doing reviewing a fantasy novel?” My answer is this: I
have no answer for you. Technically, you <i>could</i>
consider this a mystery novel – there is a mystery that is solved at a certain
point in the novel – but I wouldn’t recommend approaching it as such. The
reason I picked up this book is tangentially related to crime fiction – Bryan Fuller’s
next project after t<a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2015/09/digestif-farewell-to-hannibal-2013-2015.html">he fantastic TV series </a><i><a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2015/09/digestif-farewell-to-hannibal-2013-2015.html">Hannibal</a>
</i>was a television adaptation of <i>American
Gods</i>. I was intrigued by the description, and the book landed on my
to-be-read pile. I felt like picking this book up a few weeks ago, so I did.</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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And I’m very glad I did. <i>American
Gods</i> is in many ways a bizarre book, telling the story of Shadow, a
convicted prisoner who gets out early when his wife dies in a car crash. On his
way back home, he encounters a mysterious stranger who goes by the name of Mr.
Wednesday. Thus begins Shadow’s involvement in an epic war between gods, pitting
“old gods” (e.g. Odin, Anansi) against their new rivals (who represent such
things as modern media or the Internet). But the book is much more than a clash
between deities, it is a fascinating attempt to depict America and its relationship
with these deities.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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I truly dare not describe much more of the book in this way,
because it would ruin a one-of-a-kind reading experience. Gaiman is an
excellent writer, and he easily kept my interest going even when, objectively
speaking, the story was quite slow. On a plot level, some of the story’s twists
were easy to anticipate, but others manage to almost come out of the blue. There
are many interjections throughout the narrative (including short “Coming to America”
stories) that seem bizarre at first, and not all of them have an easy
explanation, but they all feel like they belong in this story.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As I read, I felt like I was reading something special, I
was fascinated by every word. Indeed, the more I read, the more I slowed down
my reading, eager to savour the experience of reading this book. Consequently,
it took me a very long time to get through the 560 pages of this book – the edition
which I read was an expanded 10<sup>th</sup> anniversary edition which used the
author’s preferred text. I cannot compare this to the original edition which
won all sorts of awards – including the Hugo and Nebula – but I can say
unhesitatingly that this expanded version is well worth the money and time that
I put into it.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-79440046996225194392017-07-03T18:44:00.000-04:002017-07-03T18:44:16.955-04:00Picture Perfect<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYKIR8GLCBMGQmgY_izAXFDgXSvhwxCZ8FxqUojz1dRdUfb6lQx37DVYfdbT9hZUlZyKMXli2CBBkk9tnu4APMB3g1wV9ZCPY4pjJzG8Tto2UzFppua9L3h1douHGVwqF3fD5Fq7asqWw/s1600/12imagetrouble_english.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYKIR8GLCBMGQmgY_izAXFDgXSvhwxCZ8FxqUojz1dRdUfb6lQx37DVYfdbT9hZUlZyKMXli2CBBkk9tnu4APMB3g1wV9ZCPY4pjJzG8Tto2UzFppua9L3h1douHGVwqF3fD5Fq7asqWw/s320/12imagetrouble_english.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
John Baird caught sight of a book and it captured his
attention. On the cover was an old photograph of a street from a bygone era,
but for some reason, the photograph haunted him. Desperate for answers, John
even allowed himself to be hypnotized by a local shop owner to try and get to
the bottom of the mystery. His obsession with the photograph begins to distress
his new wife Andrea, who is equally puzzled by her husband’s reticence to
discuss his London job – he disappears for the day and says nothing about where
he was or what he did...<o:p></o:p></div>
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Meanwhile, Dr. Alan Twist and Inspector Archibald Hurst are
hunting a serial killer known as the Acid Bath Murderer, and before long the
two plot threads collide, along with a third thread taking place in Victorian
London. There are even two impossibilities at work: first, a clairvoyant sends
his own death prediction to himself, only to be found murdered in a locked
room. Second, a man disappears without trace from a room that is under observation
from all sides.<br />
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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This complex web of plot forms the basis of Paul Halter’s <i>L’Image trouble </i>(translated as <i>The Picture from the Past</i>), and it is
exceptionally difficult to describe without spoilers. Halter is one of my
favourite current mystery writers – his books often have fantastic plots, and
even on the rare occasion where the solution is disappointing, I love his
imaginative touch at creating these scenarios. <i>The Picture from the Past</i> is no exception: the plot effortlessly
carried my interest throughout. Where the writing itself is concerned, I
thought Halter did a very good job of capturing my imagination, but there were
one or two odd moments. For example, the first-person narration that opens the
book is a little odd, given the direction the story eventually takes, and it is
unceremoniously dropped at a certain point. These are so different in style
that they got me to wonder whether this book was heavily edited, or whether
Halter attempted a narrative experiment and then called it off, or if he
revised his intended ending and correspondingly changed his approach to a large
chunk of the narrative. No matter what the explanation here is, the stylistic
quirks are not too distracting, and in fact, one of the stylistic quirks ends
up being a pretty significant part of the narrative.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On a plot level, the two impossible crimes in this book are
pretty decent. I absolutely loved the mystery of the murdered clairvoyant,
which was well-clued and ingenious. I was a little less enthusiastic about the
impossible disappearance, which was more or less a routine impossible crime
(aside from one very clever idea near the end). However, when it comes to the
solution of the story as a whole, there was one major issue. I find myself in a
tricky spot, because I can’t really describe the nature of the issue without
spoilers. It is Paul Halter’s attempt to pull off a solution straight from the
Golden Age, but I really don’t think it was ever a good solution to begin with.
All sorts of writers, Agatha Christie included, tried to pull it off, and I
have never been fully convinced by it – it always raises a cry of protest from
the reader, I find. This holds just as true for Halter’s attempt at making this
solution work – I just can’t bring myself to believe the plot point that is absolutely
central to the solution.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The good news is that I don’t read Paul Halter for gritty
realism. Though the solution is outlandish, it works within the type of tale
Halter is trying to tell without completely shattering the illusion the author
is trying to pull off. (Unlike, say, one of the impossible crimes in <i>The Seven Wonders of Crime </i>– namely the
death by dehydration – which retroactively ruined a large chunk of the reading
experience.) I was willing to swallow something that I didn’t quite like in
order to also enjoy the taste of the elements that I quite enjoyed, namely the
impossibilities Halter comes up with on a routine basis. Thus, as a whole, <i>The Picture from the Past</i> was an
excellent read. It was a real page-turner, had some truly ingenious ideas, and
was fiendishly entertaining. It has a couple of blemishes, but that didn’t ruin
my enjoyment of the tale.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-25075454094407260862017-06-16T12:00:00.000-04:002017-06-16T12:00:12.973-04:00Signed in Blood<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf3sPcDT8NttUUyt9DDTFPdLnJgtCV3WUkB0mPsGIlsKhgXn5Sx7o7GXwJ4o8eaeyLPjjR3Az15eljx8sUbEiYvKWheTjtXSMhHL214f68qWJt9lhcHdtyD1IBBpH74yBhoBPkdrVxZ68/s1600/a+pact+with+satan+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf3sPcDT8NttUUyt9DDTFPdLnJgtCV3WUkB0mPsGIlsKhgXn5Sx7o7GXwJ4o8eaeyLPjjR3Az15eljx8sUbEiYvKWheTjtXSMhHL214f68qWJt9lhcHdtyD1IBBpH74yBhoBPkdrVxZ68/s320/a+pact+with+satan+01.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
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Mrs. Wentworth came to see Father Bredder with a very
disturbing story. She was terrified of being murdered – burned to death – by her
husband. She told him of the time her mattress was soaked in gasoline, and
other mysterious incidents. She’s even heard her husband’s voice telling her that
she must be burned! But how could this be possible? Mrs. Wentworth’s husband, a
dentist, has been dead for two months, having died in a traffic accident!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Father Bredder doesn’t brush off Mrs. Wentworth’s story,
though – he has a nasty feeling of having spotted Satan’s hand at work in this
situation, and he enlists the help of Lieutenant Louis Minardi of the Los
Angeles police to investigate Mrs. Wentworth’s story. When the case turns
deadly, Father Bredder must investigate who made <i>A Pact with Satan</i>, selling their soul to the Evil One by committing
murder…</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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<i>A Pact with Satan</i>
is the second Father Bredder mystery by Leonard Holton, penname of Leonard
Wibberley (author of <i>The Mouse That Roared</i>).
I first came across the author in Otto Penzler’s <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Detectives-Celebrated-ebook/dp/B008V5JHLO/ref=tmm_kin_title_0"><span style="font-style: normal;">The Great Detectives</span></a></i>, a book which collected
a few essays by various authors about their detectives. Holton’s essay on
Father Bredder particularly fascinated me, in which he explained why Father Bredder
is not just another Father Brown clone, and how he attempted to create
mysteries which Father Bredder would solve with “spiritual fingerprints”. (It
helped that Holton had words of high praise for Agatha Christie.)</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Father Bredder’s motives for investigating crimes are
simple: he wants to save the soul of the criminal, for he or she has not just
broken the laws of men, but the law of God. Holton’s essay did spoil the first book of the series, <i>The Saint Maker</i>, but that <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2013/05/it-takes-devil-to-make-saint.html">still
proved to be a delightful read</a>. Well, since originally reading and
reviewing <i>The Saint Maker</i> in 2013, I
was delighted to discover that Holton’s Father Bredder mysteries are available –
at a very reasonable price – in the Kindle store. So I was eager to jump into <i>A Pact with Satan</i>, the second book in
the series, to see if I would enjoy it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unfortunately, <i>A Pact
with Satan</i> is a relatively big disappointment as a mystery. As soon as the
mystery was outlined, I knew the solution, and was shocked only by how obvious
the answer was. I saw precisely what Holton was trying to do. In the very best
mysteries, not a single fact is concealed from the reader. How, then is the
author to spring a surprise? One effective way is to get the reader to
construct a faulty framework to interpret those facts. At the last moment, the
author changes the framework, and <i>voila</i>,
there is the solution, so surprising, yet so obvious in retrospect! Thus, to
make a ridiculous example, the crucial fact that the dead man would enjoy ice cream
in his study is not crucial due to the ice cream, but because the freezer in
which the ice cream had to be kept was missing. Unfortunately, the framework
Holton wants you to make is so rickety and clearly faulty that as a seasoned
mystery reader I didn’t buy into it for a moment, but instantly saw the correct
framework.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But on top of this major flaw is the fact that the motive is
both absurd and sprung out of nowhere. It was the only aspect of the mystery I
couldn’t understand, and when I read the explanation I shook my head in
disappointment. Indeed, the most fascinating mystery in <i>A Pact with Satan</i> was the mystery of what Lieutenant Minardi would
buy his daughter Barbara for her thirteenth birthday: he enlisted Father
Bredder’s help for gift suggestions, and their attempts to come up with
something were one of the book’s enjoyable features… but even this got a very
disappointing resolution, because it technically never got resolved! Barbara
does indeed get a present, but it doesn’t technically come from her father. So
as far as I’m concerned, this is a cold case.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Yc_PH5ucsR-MgMIsTQgDKUYXFulWqwoJxO8xzQbL2CeYzS9jhCNsl-y6r7LrzRLj-Ro-Rj6VX7SNfv-lHQjhDsvsjKJxL_adGmOMQ5rN6eUV-JiO-2J9hASNqz8ZJ3m9IyoLGL9ct3c/s1600/a+pact+with+satan+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="318" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Yc_PH5ucsR-MgMIsTQgDKUYXFulWqwoJxO8xzQbL2CeYzS9jhCNsl-y6r7LrzRLj-Ro-Rj6VX7SNfv-lHQjhDsvsjKJxL_adGmOMQ5rN6eUV-JiO-2J9hASNqz8ZJ3m9IyoLGL9ct3c/s320/a+pact+with+satan+02.jpg" width="214" /></a>Does that mean that I hated this book? No, it doesn’t.
Father Bredder and Leonard Holton built up a lot of good will with me in my previous
exposure to their stuff, and this proved to be the difference maker. I already
liked this fictional universe and the characters within, and it was nice to be
back. I particularly like what Holton tries to do in constructing a mystery where
Father Bredder’s identity as a Catholic priest gives him unique insight into
the spiritual condition of the people around him, including the criminal. It is
different from Chesterton’s Father Brown, though superficially it may sound
identical. I also love Father Bredder, a man who tries his best to be a good
priest but who has also experienced the horrors of war. However, as a
seminarian studying to become a Catholic priest one day (God willing), this
could be bias on my part – I’m not sure a non-Catholic would get the same level
of enjoyment out of Father Bredder.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Regardless, <i>A Pact
with Satan</i> is the wrong book to begin reading this series with. The
solution is obvious, the whole case is frustratingly transparent despite having
a few good ideas – I would have liked to see the murder method explained at the
end in a better mystery. It is fun to meet these fictional characters again,
but if you were meeting them for the first time, you might walk away asking
yourself why it took them so long to spot the obvious.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-2120458635877020472017-06-07T15:58:00.001-04:002017-06-07T15:58:25.928-04:00Enter the Murderer<div class="MsoNormal">
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Set in the world of the theatre, Derek Smith’s <i>Come to Paddington Fair</i> brings back Algy
Lawrence as well as his policeman sidekick, Chief Inspector Steve Castle, from <i>Whistle up the Devil</i>. Their involvement
in the story begins innocuously enough, as Castle has received a pair of
tickets to the theatre. But included with the tickets was a mysterious message
that simply reads: “Come to Paddington Fair.” The meaning of the message is not
immediately apparent, but its sinister undertones become quite clear when the
play’s leading lady is killed onstage, during a climactic scene in which her
character was shot.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Fortunately, with two detectives in the audience, the
investigation is poised to begin on the right foot, and indeed, a suspect is
apprehended almost immediately! But, as the investigation proceeds, suspect
after suspect is cleared, and it slowly begins to appear impossible for anyone
to have committed the crime! Thus, <i>Come
to Paddington Fair</i> establishes itself firmly as a sort of spiritual sequel
to <i>Whistle up the Devil</i>. Instead of a
conventional locked room mystery, Smith gives his readers an impossible crime
in the vein of “nobody <i>could</i> have committed
the murder… and yet it happened!”</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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Without a doubt, one of my favourite posts of all-time on
this blog is <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2011/12/devil-take-hindmost.html">my
review of Derek Smith’s <i>Whistle up the
Devil</i></a>. I came to hear of the book because of French mystery scholar
Roland Lacourbe, but I had never heard of Derek Smith before. When I read <i>Whistle up the Devil</i>, I absolutely loved
it, but I couldn’t find anything about Smith online. So I decided to do some research
and write a little bit about Smith for the review. The result was one of my
favourite blog pieces ever, shedding some light on an obscure writer and book
while giving the book a favourable review.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4HEfkbpm-cPLI-EFfJlv1WyU3AJU6gxZjAp-ZqPAid_fylROof0tYCIt7-vA-6_YCwoAOShMNiLo5FK_3bjUndhFrLlpB3NiW0VHCcV2kNiGg9sikjgdX7vgPwNlcvM1O0nFh2Dfl-e4/s1600/paddington02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4HEfkbpm-cPLI-EFfJlv1WyU3AJU6gxZjAp-ZqPAid_fylROof0tYCIt7-vA-6_YCwoAOShMNiLo5FK_3bjUndhFrLlpB3NiW0VHCcV2kNiGg9sikjgdX7vgPwNlcvM1O0nFh2Dfl-e4/s320/paddington02.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
As regular readers have observed, this blog has been on
something of a hiatus for the last few years, with only occasional updates from
me. However, since 2011, much has changed in the mystery landscape – many
authors who were once impossible to find, such as J. J. Connington and Henry
Wade, have been reprinted in e-book form. Derek Smith has also benefited from
these reprints, as the intrepid John Pugmire of Locked Room International
published <i>The Derek Smith Omnibus</i> in
2014, collecting together <i>Whistle up the
Devil, Come to Paddington Fair, </i>and <i>Model
for Murder</i>. I purchased this omnibus when it was originally published, but
could not read it for the longest time. At long last, however, I had the chance
to sit down and read Smith’s follow-up to <i>Whistle
up the Devil</i>, <i>Come to Paddington
Fair.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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In many ways, <i>Come to
Paddington Fair </i>is almost just as good as its predecessor, and I would
argue in some aspects it even improves on the first book. In particular,
Smith’s character development was much better this time around, especially
where Algy Lawrence is concerned. Smith was much more successful this time
around in making Lawrence an interesting detective. His goal for the character
in <i>Whistle up the Devil</i>, as he
described it in a letter to Doug Greene, was as follows: “What I had intended
was a developing portrait of a young idealist, highly intelligent, yet rather
naïve and slightly sentimental – a romantic who would eventually be caught in
the trap of his own sensibilities.” Although he was not particularly successful
in bringing this to life in his first book, he is much better at it in <i>Come to Paddington Fair</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another spot of improvement concerns the book’s atmosphere. <i>Whistle Up the Devil</i> began very poorly
in this regard, although it improved slightly over time. But this time around,
the book is steeped in the world of theatre, and Smith really manages to
capture that atmosphere well. It works marvellously throughout. There are a few
stylistic oddities from time to time – for instance, the same description of a
character’s action is described in narration referring to a future
conversation, and then the future conversation happens so we get that
description again – but these are minor and do not detract from the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrLFPL-k8N2cxnnV_IVxZv2fnntqGOXFNDjYd42-B7LZOHV4yYSV5ZOsQKaNsUabKuU4bA12DZ6HwYGhtf9fMuQHCLppuZdho1ANM-iv8y-1USTe_jgRgPZi20nckEMNJuU29-M-4LbaE/s1600/paddington01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="240" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrLFPL-k8N2cxnnV_IVxZv2fnntqGOXFNDjYd42-B7LZOHV4yYSV5ZOsQKaNsUabKuU4bA12DZ6HwYGhtf9fMuQHCLppuZdho1ANM-iv8y-1USTe_jgRgPZi20nckEMNJuU29-M-4LbaE/s320/paddington01.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
The plot is a beauty. I managed to anticipate Smith and solve
part of it – as soon as the crime was committed, I put my money on a certain
horse and stuck to my guns throughout the story, even though there were times
when I questioned my initial choice. I had a hunch I knew what kind of twist the
author was going for, and as it turned out I was right. However, I only partly
grasped the mechanics of the murder scheme, which were ingeniously pulled off.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Overall, <i>Come to
Paddington Fair</i> was a delightful read, in some ways even an improvement on
its predecessor. I loved the plot, which presented a complex problem and easily
kept my interest throughout. The characterization and atmosphere markedly
improved, and I walked away from the book very glad that I had read it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Note:</b> Of interest
to readers, <i>The Derek Smith Omnibus</i>
includes a number of short pieces by people who knew Derek Smith and worked
with him, including Hidetoshi Mori, who originally published <i>Come to Paddington Fair</i> in a very limited
print in Japan in 1997.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-26339591577369952922017-05-28T17:29:00.001-04:002017-05-28T17:29:23.219-04:00Treasure Island<div class="MsoNormal">
Introduction:<i> Goodness
me, it has been a <u>very</u> long time since I last reviewed a book, not since
late August of 2015!! Unfortunately, the demands on my time during the school
year have made reading fiction nearly impossible. Indeed, during the 2016-17
academic year, as I ended up writing over 160 pages worth of essays, I was only
able to read one work of fiction – Shusaku Endo’s </i>Silence<i> – but it was a book I felt I should not
review on the blog. Now that summer is upon us, I can take a deep breath, step
back from academia, and read a little bit more fiction. So I decided to treat
myself with some mysteries. My reviewing may be a little rusty, so I please ask
you to forgive me in advance.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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* * * * * * *<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf78vKu_atC-eTVbj_V4Y7SUPSJJlZBNN2VXZQYBJT6kAhfwDxIZQmuf99Pvsy27bflEJO4sksm-_RoEn-drbqJEMxcTQbrQjetIlvhgfzOPXTkIrK579_4UswUSkXWqVXk3_7CGkABpc/s1600/moai+00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf78vKu_atC-eTVbj_V4Y7SUPSJJlZBNN2VXZQYBJT6kAhfwDxIZQmuf99Pvsy27bflEJO4sksm-_RoEn-drbqJEMxcTQbrQjetIlvhgfzOPXTkIrK579_4UswUSkXWqVXk3_7CGkABpc/s1600/moai+00.jpg" /></a></div>
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As Alice Arisugawa’s <i>The
Moai Island Puzzle </i>begins, we are introduced to a group of students at
Kyoto University who are on their way to Kashikijima Island in order to solve a
puzzle leading to hidden treasure. One of these students is the author, Alice
Arisugawa, who along with his friend Mr. Egami is heading to the island on the
invitation of their friend Maria. (Alice, by the way, is a male name here.) Maria’s
grandfather, Tetsunosuke Arima, hid a collection of diamonds somewhere on the island,
but neglected to tell anyone the location of the treasure before dying. All
that is known is that the <i>moai</i>
statues all over the island, inspired by the Easter Island statues, are the key
to solving the puzzle.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It doesn’t take long for the murders to begin, as two bodies
are discovered. The victims were shot, but the rifle used is nowhere in the
room, and all potential exits (the window and the only door) were locked. More
mysterious events occur, and it is up to Mr. Egami to solve the puzzle, with
Alice acting as his Watson.</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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Published in English in 2016 by Locked Room International, <i>The Moai Island Puzzle</i> was translated
from the Japanese by Ho-Ling Wong, and includes an introduction by Soji Shimada
(author of the brilliant <i>The</i> <i>Tokyo Zodiac Murders</i>). In his
introduction, Shimada gives this book, originally published in 1989, a lot of
credit for reviving interest in the traditional <i>honkaku </i>style of detective fiction in Japan, giving rise to the <i>shin honkaku </i>(“new orthodox”) style.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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I must begin with a quick round of applause to Ho-Ling Wong
for his translation. Following on the heels of his work on <i>The Decagon House Murders</i>, this translation is excellent – it is
readable, but it also gives you a sense that the translator is sticking as
closely as possible to the author’s original text. This means some things have
to be explained to the non-Japanese crowd (e.g. “Maria Arima” being a
palindrome in Japanese), but these explanations are wonderfully incorporated
into the text, occasionally via footnote. I hope Ho-Ling will follow this up
with more translations.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTFYpbWVetWcTInX5WRAIeQwC3nid_b9wHPnhqrRSBhG-qWNP-45ZXdfwFZ7OiXXYpcz_dMj6LQuH6SFpmCSNW4-Qyz9KpVhtTZUB05jp0FU139jwn1bpM3kG3MK38KIRZel7Zc57EM8/s1600/moai+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTFYpbWVetWcTInX5WRAIeQwC3nid_b9wHPnhqrRSBhG-qWNP-45ZXdfwFZ7OiXXYpcz_dMj6LQuH6SFpmCSNW4-Qyz9KpVhtTZUB05jp0FU139jwn1bpM3kG3MK38KIRZel7Zc57EM8/s1600/moai+01.jpg" /></a></div>
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Ironically, the weakest thing about <i>The Moai Island Puzzle</i> is the titular <i>moai </i>puzzle! You see, relatively early in the book, we are informed
that the puzzlemaker Tetsunosuke Arima had given a hint for the <i>moai </i>puzzle’s solution, and this hint eventually
guides our detectives to the correct solution. However, this solution relies on
an interpretation of the word “evolution” which simply does not ring true in
English – although to be fair, part of this objection might be coming from my
previous scientific studies. I cannot be more specific due to spoilers, but it
was the treasure-hunting aspect of the book which ultimately did not quite
satisfy – I felt like I never would have had the chance to figure out this
aspect of the book before the detectives. In all due fairness to the author, though,
this aspect of the puzzle got solved long before the Ellery Queen-inspired “Challenge
to the Reader” is issued.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thus, despite this complaint of mine, the book as a whole
has a meaty plot which offered plenty of satisfying mysteries and resolved them
satisfactorily. As a result, I found the <i>The
Moai Island Puzzle </i>to be a very good book indeed overall. I liked the
identity of the culprit, which semi caught me off guard. I also liked how some
of the story’s apparently more complex aspects had simple solutions at their
core – in particular, I had my doubts that the author could explain why the
murderer’s plan in one part became so complicated for no apparent reason, but this
aspect and potential nitpick was addressed with a disarmingly simple solution. As
for the locked room mystery, the explanation is also one of those simple but
satisfying one, which I tend to prefer over solutions of mechanical ingenuity
which require an engineering degree to comprehend.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The only other quibble of mine is that the characters are not particularly memorable. Because the Japanese names are so unfamiliar to a Western reader like myself, this meant that I occasionally had to consult the list of characters at the start of the book, especially before the first murder occurred. For me, this is not a dealbreaker at all, though: the characters were developed as needed for the plot, and the story is so enjoyable that it wouldn't have mattered if the characters had literally been cardboard cutouts.</div>
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Overall, I really enjoyed <i>The Moai Island Puzzle</i>. After such a long time away from detective
fiction, it was nice to sink my teeth into a mystery of this calibre, and I got
a lot of enjoyment out of it, even if one of the puzzles had its problematic
aspects. This was a quick, enjoyable, and stimulating read, and I hope we have
not seen the last of Alice Arisugawa in English.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-75666475330441184072016-05-30T21:32:00.004-04:002017-05-28T17:43:57.179-04:00You are not the millionth visitor!Well, this milestone has come unexpectedly!<br />
<br />
When I checked in on the blog today, I discovered that the view counter was well over 1 million visitors! This is despite the fact that I haven't posted anything at all recently, focusing instead on my studies.<br />
<br />
I would like to take this moment to thank all of you, the readers, for your support. This blog would not be possible without you and your support!<i> At the Scene of the Crime</i> is not going anywhere for now.<br />
<br />
This milestone has gotten me to reflect on how much I have changed along with the blog. When I started this blog back in 2011, I was a very different person. Although I had originally conceived of the blog as mainly GAD oriented, discovering authors such as William L. DeAndrea, Bill Pronzini, Paul Doherty, and Paul Halter helped to broaden my horizons into more contemporary mysteries as well.<br />
<br />
The blog was founded after I had read a particularly bad book, and I wanted a forum on which to express my distaste with the book and, by extension, the author. There have been similar moments throughout the years -- such as when I was <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2011/11/i-jury.html">infuriated with </a><i><a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2011/11/i-jury.html">The Act of Roger Murgatroyd</a> </i>or when I got <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2011/09/we-like-to-get-trial-over-with-quickly.html">absolutely disgusted with Mickey Spillane's <i>I, The Jury</i></a> (which led to <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2013/11/the-keep-your-mouth-shut-files-1-mickey.html">all sorts of contradictory fun</a> when I eventually became a Spillane fan). This kind of snarky, angry style was perhaps what I was best known for -- especially when it came to defending the honour of <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2013/09/of-shoes-and-ships-and-cereal.html">Agatha Christie</a> or <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2014/02/the-daft-and-furious.html">G. K. Chesterton</a>. That being said, I'd occasionally switch it up, such as when I wrote a <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2013/01/the-adventure-of-haunting-that-led-to.html">review of a Harry Stephen Keeler novel in the style of Keeler</a>. I enjoyed doing this writing, and although I might phrase things a little differently if I were to write these reviews today -- for example, I don't think I'd get nearly as upset with Gilbert Adair -- I do think my work holds up relatively well.<br />
<br />
However, my reading had to be put on hold extensively when I entered the seminary in 2014. My studies are very important to me, and consequently I'd find myself reading <i>Winnie Ille Pu </i>for entertainment (AND Latin instruction) instead of, say, the latest Nameless Detective novel. If it is any consolation, this focus on my studies has resulted in me receiving an academic award for my performance in the final year of my philosophy program.<br />
<br />
Though my activity levels on this blog have dropped significantly, I'm glad to see that people still read my material, and I hope that it has been found useful, informative, or perchance even entertaining. I hope you continue to read and enjoy this blog, and I will continue to maintain the blog, even if I my posting is erratic and sporadic. <strike>(That being said, I <i>do</i> hope to have a review in the next week or so.)</strike> [edit (May 2017): Yeah, that review sadly never happened...]Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-10937721583970930882016-01-06T03:17:00.000-05:002016-01-06T10:04:03.692-05:00When Good Screenwriters Become Missing Persons<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">By Chris Chan<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Note: An abridged version of
this essay first appeared in the magazine <u>Gilbert</u> several years ago.)<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxmLsDDILzaTe4hGtMHm8spYJp6NaQawlFKv8z7TbjmTqvcTpgQPsp3GyTKId4z5nrSQUiu_Ki4Vs-ObXKpxy3u7rzdZ4UXOUAJBAHRAIDGkLxrkOtsg87_0RJheIx0clcfCPDFpyyUBay/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxmLsDDILzaTe4hGtMHm8spYJp6NaQawlFKv8z7TbjmTqvcTpgQPsp3GyTKId4z5nrSQUiu_Ki4Vs-ObXKpxy3u7rzdZ4UXOUAJBAHRAIDGkLxrkOtsg87_0RJheIx0clcfCPDFpyyUBay/s320/images.jpeg" width="320" /></a></i></b></div>
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When it debuted in 2002, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Without A Trace </i>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">WAT</i>)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>was a highly
entertaining and well-acted drama about a fictional FBI Missing Persons Unit.
In its second season, the series matured brilliantly into one of the best
series on television. The dynamism that propelled the freshman and sophomore
years dulled a bit in the still-often-decent third and fourth seasons, but
midway through the fourth season, the clever plotting and subtle character
development began a slow and heartbreaking disintegration. Despite occasional
brief resurgences, by the time <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">WAT</i>
was cancelled after its seventh season, it was an emaciated shadow of its
former self, yet it always could have easily returned to greatness.<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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<br /></div>
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An exceptional ensemble cast made
the show sparkle. Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia) starred as the
hard-and-sharp-as-nails director who couldn’t save his crumbling personal life.
Samantha Spade (Poppy Montgomery), Vivian Johnson (Marianne Jean-Baptiste),
Danny Taylor (Enrique Murciano), and Martin Fitzgerald (Eric Close) rounded out
the cast. Every episode provided a little insight into each character’s life
and mentality, sometimes through throwaway lines, sometimes through heartfelt
monologues. By the second and third seasons, intense character arcs such as the
past relationship between Jack and Sam, the budding relationship between Sam
and Martin, Danny’s bond with his estranged convict brother, Martin and
Vivian’s reactions to a fatal shooting, and Jack’s family issues all
contributed to creating real and sympathetic characters. There was a solid
sense that the writers knew everything about these characters’ pasts and
psychology, and were gradually and skillfully revealing these details to the
audience.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
In the fourth season, the carefully
crafted character development began to unravel. A sixth detective was added to
the cast: Elena Delgado (Rosalyn Sanchez); and her presence would appeal to
some fans and put off others. Unfortunately, heavy attention on her character
meant that the rest of the supporting cast often received short thrift. This
was especially sad in Vivian’s case. Jean-Baptiste was by far the show’s
strongest actress, but she was frequently and cruelly shortchanged, sometimes
getting as little as three or four lines an episode. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
Furthermore, after the fourth
season, the adroit character storylines fell apart. Some plots, such as
Vivian’s health problems and Martin’s painkiller addiction, were introduced
with great dramatic fanfare, played up for a half-dozen episodes, and then
abruptly dropped, referenced in a fifth season episode, and then completely
abandoned. Continuity regarding character development disintegrated. During the
final three seasons, Vivian, Danny, and Martin’s characters were rarely
developed at all, and their connections to the other cast members were largely
severed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
Vivian began as Jack’s longtime confidante,
but the writers made them drift apart. Danny and Martin started the show as
antagonistic rivals, but soon won each other over and became best buddies.
Their banter added humor to the show, but by the last two seasons their rapport
was kicked offscreen. A romance between Danny and Elena started in the fifth
season, went unmentioned in season six, and was then abruptly brought back in
season seven. The growing attraction between Martin and Sam featured
prominently in the first two seasons, then moved from rocky secret relationship
to breakup to a sibling-like connection over the next three seasons. In season
seven? You’d barely know that they were even friends at work, given their maybe
ten minutes of screen time together the whole final season.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
Aside from some disproportionate
time spent on Elena, only the leads received much attention in seasons six and
seven. The integration of Montgomery’s real-life pregnancy and boyfriend into
the plot derailed her connections to the rest of the cast. Revelations
regarding Sam’s past were mishandled badly, and the on-again, off-again
relationship between Jack and Sam was one-tenth-heartedly resumed in the final
season, botched, and settled blandly in the finale. Worst of all, Jack Malone
was originally a detective who specialized in psychological insight and mental
tactics, but the later seasons turned him into a knockoff of Jack Bauer. Where
the Jack of the early seasons cracked suspects by finding the chinks in their
mental armor, the Jack of the later seasons turned to guns and threats of
violence in order to get information.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
The series had its share of rotten
apples even during its glory days. Some episodes, such as one that presented
Catholic officials as sinister and surreptitious, one with a speech declaring
that “abortion is a Christian act,” a horribly misguided one-off attempt to
play the show as a comedy involving agoraphobic lesbians, and one disturbing
ending that attempted to romanticize ritual murder would be enough to put
potential viewers off the show completely if they saw any of these episodes
first.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
Although the show could plunge to
disturbing depths, it could also ascend to magnificent heights. The early
seasons were full of gems, including a three-episode arc involving a predatory
headmaster who became Jack’s arch-nemesis. In another classic episode, a pair
of identical twins, one innocent, one guilty, became suspects in a
disappearance, and the team had to determine culpability. Two open-ended
episodes, one involving a convicted killer on death row, the other attacking
media bias on racial issues, managed to make their ambiguous finales compelling
rather than merely frustrating. A desperate father (Charles S. Dutton, in an Emmy-winning
performance) attempting to find the son who had been kidnapped years earlier
made for some of the series’ most poignant moments. Other treasures involved a
hostage crisis connected to 9/11, an overachieving high school student vainly
trying to hide a secret, the emotional fallout from Jack’s disintegrating
family life, and a storyline revolving around Jack’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted
father (Martin Landau). Arguably the series’ finest moment was “Wannabe,” a
second-season masterpiece about a missing boy and the hell that peer pressure
and adolescent bullying can create. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
During the latter half of the
show’s run, truly great episodes became nonexistent. The surprising twists
faded as pedestrian, cookie-cutter episodes proliferated, and the subtle glimpses
at the characters’ personal lives devolved into soap opera. The actors did the
best they could with flat dialogue, and indeed, the show’s woes were
attributable almost entirely to the writers. A show about finding missing
persons is different from a show about solving murders. With a disappearance,
the missing person can be found alive and well, be murdered, or never be
located. What is crucial is that the viewer <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">care</i>
about the victims and want them to be found or avenged.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><br />
In a murder, it’s O.K. if the viewer feels
nothing more than a passing twinge of pity for a corpse, but in a missing
persons case, not caring whether or not the individual in question is ever
found means the whole episode falls flat. The first few seasons created missing
persons the viewer could sympathize with or at least be interested in. When
they were rescued, the viewers cheered; when they were dead, the viewers cried.
The last few seasons? When you have missing persons like dental floss– about as
close to being one-dimensional as you can get– there’s no impetus for watching
the show. As opposed to the glory days when you hoped that a war veteran or
schizophrenic girl would come home safe, the mediocre episodes could have
pulled more heartstrings by kidnapping a coatrack.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgahOpSz4IzMp44KeUBy7ssBmcvPEWH7m6WDZ1buGCuZD_xpAhkCs_zW3gRHX9geqikadCq7M9WWYnCQ7_5xTbvBtVH58-lyiDRjSNQBC94Du2d4_uwV-gHR8V6B3nA5Y8IWZfzEOsHPQPr/s1600/images-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgahOpSz4IzMp44KeUBy7ssBmcvPEWH7m6WDZ1buGCuZD_xpAhkCs_zW3gRHX9geqikadCq7M9WWYnCQ7_5xTbvBtVH58-lyiDRjSNQBC94Du2d4_uwV-gHR8V6B3nA5Y8IWZfzEOsHPQPr/s320/images-1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Clichés also crippled the series.
You can only hear the line “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Name of
supposed parent)</i> isn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Name of
child)</i>’s real father!” so many times before you want to throw a footstool
at the screen. A little imagination could have provided dozens of original
reasons for a person to willingly vanish, or ways to hide a body, or at least
create some suitably hateful villains. By season seven, the family reunion
scenes had the punch of a geriatric arthritic boxer, the viewer knew that
would-be saints always had a dark secret in their past, that if the missing
person was accused of a crime that someone else was probably responsible, and
that if the missing person turned his back on another character in the final
flashback scenes that he would be murdered approximately one-eighth of a second
later. Most of the later episodes weren’t bad so much as unoriginal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Careful examination of the last few seasons
shows that most of the later episodes fall into one of approximately three main
templates, without any twists worth mentioning.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
All these complaints disguise the
fact that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">WAT’s</i> early seasons were so
engaging, suspenseful, clever, emotionally involving without being
manipulative, and psychologically well-rounded. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a long delay after disappointing sales
for seasons one and two, the last five seasons were also released on DVD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite the decline in quality, the show
didn’t deserve cancellation. With better scripts to motivate the cast, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">WAT</i> could easily have been rejuvenated
into stellar television. As it is, one can only hope that the cast finds new
projects worthy of their talents.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03343947041898057102noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-35561007170738023702015-09-02T17:42:00.001-04:002015-09-02T17:49:08.214-04:00Digestif: A Farewell to "Hannibal" (2013-2015)<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ0S5qaV0Rxva4VLnxIjbLqWY0FWQcFAgNpBSbou4XpegjUc76kpmQ9oU2KQXMJdVh2w3dtA2FeEHDG8ZblmNGZe0JUgJdtTQKfRnW1LqdfB70Kr6PIb37BkSV84nOygjhfFIswrIyUWQ/s1600/hannibal+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ0S5qaV0Rxva4VLnxIjbLqWY0FWQcFAgNpBSbou4XpegjUc76kpmQ9oU2KQXMJdVh2w3dtA2FeEHDG8ZblmNGZe0JUgJdtTQKfRnW1LqdfB70Kr6PIb37BkSV84nOygjhfFIswrIyUWQ/s320/hannibal+01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>Patrick:</b> When I first
heard about <i>Hannibal</i>, my instinct was
to roll my eyes and turn the other way. Really? Yet another Hannibal Lecter
prequel? Hadn't we learned our lesson from the horrendous <i>Hannibal</i> <i>Rising</i>? And
starring Mads Mikkelsen as Lecter? There's no way it could possibly work, I
thought to myself. It would probably just glorify Lecter's killing sprees as he
killed people, and fans would eat up the violence and consider Lecter a hero.
So I went on my merry little way, discarding <i>Hannibal</i> into the same trash heap into which I mentally relegated
shows like <i>Breaking Bad</i> and <i>Dexter</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Of course, then I actually watched <i>Breaking Bad</i> and <i>Dexter</i>,
and I learned that the fans who admired the protagonists from those shows were
wrong to do so. <i>Breaking Bad</i> deals
with the complete moral breakdown of Walter White, whose downfall is a direct
result of his pride and greed. As for Dexter Morgan, he is an unreliable
narrator who lies to himself and to the audience about his feelings - he calls
himself a sociopath because it is easier than examining his choices and
questioning the "code" given to him by his adoptive father Harry,
surely one of the worst father figures in all of television.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As I was watching these shows, Chris Chan and I would
discuss them and how my views about these shows were evolving. And almost
inevitably, the subject of <i>Hannibal</i>
came up. Chris highly recommended the show to me, and because I trust his
opinions, I sat down and watched it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Hannibal</i> begins
with Will Graham tracking down a serial killer named Garrett Jacob Hobbs, who
kills young female college students. As part of his investigation, Graham is
brought into contact with Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who manipulates events behind
the scenes to engineer a confrontation between Graham and Hobbs. Will kills
Hobbs in order to save an innocent life, but the event is traumatic, and so he
turns to Dr. Lecter as his therapist.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Throughout the first season of the show, Hannibal treats
Will as a human Petri dish, conducting experiment after experiment to see how
Will will react in a certain situation. This results in Will progressively
losing his grip on reality— part of his brilliance as an investigator is his
uncanny ability to visualize the crimes from the killer's perspective, but as
the series progresses it becomes clear that this "talent" has serious
consequences on Will's sanity.</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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<b>Chris:</b> When I
first heard about the television series <i>Hannibal</i>,
my first thought was exactly the same as when I heard that they were making a
miniseries based on <i>Fargo</i>, and a
prequel series based on <i>Psycho</i>, where
a teenaged Norman Bates went to high school (<i>Bates Motel</i>), and a series about Sherlock Holmes set in modern-day
London (<i>Sherlock</i>): this is a bad idea
covered in creative bankruptcy sauce with a heaping side of piggybacking of a
classic with brand name appeal.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6nNmswHcoR1HSy9qABVxKVQf0xPxpZ8MiOr28Zw3quOwv7WATPg7Tp7sEUZsIwGRr6QR2imgPkvw29idYlMf9e_ymmFh4KiuK_mhjFxqRRTiec8tbhyphenhyphenU-ghdT0mj5Pd4rFKzpcerlg3w/s1600/hannibal+03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6nNmswHcoR1HSy9qABVxKVQf0xPxpZ8MiOr28Zw3quOwv7WATPg7Tp7sEUZsIwGRr6QR2imgPkvw29idYlMf9e_ymmFh4KiuK_mhjFxqRRTiec8tbhyphenhyphenU-ghdT0mj5Pd4rFKzpcerlg3w/s320/hannibal+03.jpg" width="320" /></a>Then I actually saw these series. I have nothing but great
things to say about <i>Sherlock</i>. I was
surprised by how creative and compelling <i>Fargo</i>
and <i>Bates Motel</i> were, particularly
the performances of Thornton, Freeman as men with no grasp of morality in <i>Fargo</i>, and Farmiglia as a damaged but
ultimately loving Mother Bates. Finding out that <i>Hannibal</i> was created by Bryan Fuller gave me cause for hope. Fuller
is the creator of <i>Pushing Daisies</i>, a delightful mystery/fantasy series about a
pie-maker who can temporarily raise the dead in order to figure out who killed
them (and collect the reward money). Though <i>Pushing Daisies</i> and <i>Hannibal</i> are very different visually, at
the core they share Fuller's artistic style, playfully dark humor, and a stress
on characters's moral decisions. Plus, a stress on elegantly presented food.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Hannibal</i> started
like many series starting out their own mythology, like <i>The X-Files</i>, with
"freak of the week" episodes. <i>Hannibal</i>
would center around bizarre yet artistically incredible murder tableaus, with
crimes committed for reasons that reveal the twisted darkness of some human
souls.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Of course, the series wasn't really about the "freaks
of the week." The real heart of the series was the relationship between
two men: Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. I have read <i>Red Dragon</i>, <i>Silence of the
Lambs</i>, and <i>Hannibal</i>, and seen the
respective movie versions of each (both <i>Red
Dragon</i> and <i>Manhunter</i> in the first
case), though I have not read or seen <i>Hannibal</i>
<i>Rising</i>. In the books, Lecter and
Graham meet only once before Lecter's capture. <b>(SPOILERS!)</b> Graham stumbles
across Lecter as part of a routine investigation, then realizes within minutes
that Lecter is the serial killer he is seeking due to artwork left in Lecter's
office. Lecter immediately wounds Graham serious, but Graham survives, Lecter
is incarcerated, and Graham is forced to turn to Lecter years later to help
catch a family annihilator. <b>(END SPOILERS)</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Hannibal</i> the TV
series explodes this dynamic. Here, Will and Hannibal meet each other early in
the series, but the Spidey-sense that allows Will to enter the minds of
murderers is malfunctioning, and Will fails to realize that Hannibal is the
darkest serial killer of all. Indeed, Hannibal becomes Will's psychiatrist, and
the two become close friends. At least Will sees Hannibal as a friend at first.
Does Lecter see Graham as a friend, a lab rat, a soul mate, or a threat to be
neutralized? Possibly all of the above.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Patrick:</b> One of
the most fascinating elements of <i>Hannibal</i>
is just how much the writers clearly revere the books. I say this as someone
who has read only <i>Red Dragon</i>; yet I
can still tell that the writers have read the books, have loved them, and want
to do them justice. The writers for <i>Hannibal</i>
do not seem to feel “confined” by the original source material. By contrast, I
often wonder whether some of the writers for <i>Agatha Christie’s Poirot</i> or <i>Marple</i>
have ever read a single Christie novel. Sometimes, they change the killer just
for the sake of changing the killer. Lesbianism was sprinkled liberally
throughout the adaptations in order to add shock value. Often, the writers
seemed to assume that a “Christie feel” means setting the story in a small
village or a country house and stop at that, radically changing the tone of the
story to something more “modern” or “relevant” (c.f. <i>The</i> <i>Mystery of the Blue Train</i>,
<i>The Labours of Hercules</i>)<o:p></o:p></div>
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On the other hand, <i>Hannibal</i>
takes its cues from the books splendidly. The “swinging pendulum” visual that
Will Graham mentally uses to visualise crimes from the killer’s POV is straight
from the books, for example. However, the series is not content to just adapt
the superficialities. (I’m looking at you, David Suchet, who in an interview
once pulled out a copy of <i>Taken at the
Flood</i>, read a passage, and delightedly exclaimed that he did exactly what
Poirot did on that page, thus proving how faithful the adaptations were to the
books… neglecting to mention that the adaptation radically changed the killer’s
actions and motivations.) I’m sorry, I got off track there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As I was saying, the series adapts more than the superficial
touches, it expands on the themes that the books present, on conversations
about the past, and it does so with an attitude of “How can we make this <i>great</i>, and send people to the books for
more?” For example, in chapter 15 of <i>Red
Dragon</i>, Will Graham and his stepson Willy have a conversation which begins
when the boy asks if it’s true that Will went to a mental hospital after
killing someone. Will explains that he had to kill Garrett Jacob Hobbs in order
to save the life of an innocent hostage, and that he got depressed afterwards
because killing someone, even if you have to, is the most horrible thing in the
world. (Keeping his audience in mind, Will censors the more stomach-churning
details.) Comparing this brief conversation (plus Will’s thoughts) to the first
two seasons of the series, they are <u>very</u> similar. Will’s sojourn in the
mental hospital is for somewhat different reasons, but it’s the kind of story
which you just know a journalistic rag like Freddy Lounds’ <i>Tattler</i> will sensationalize to a degree which would genuinely
bother Willy. Week by week, episode by episode, a new wrinkle is added to the
consequences of the Hobbs confrontation, all in spirit with the original tone,
yet different enough so that even someone familiar with the books will have a
surprising moment or two. For example, the writers adapted the book’s
explanation of Lecter’s capture, but gave it a very different ending, showing
the audience that these people know how the capture happened in the books, but
that they want to explore the dynamic between Hannibal and Will Graham, and
thus cannot use that.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One of the biggest changes from the books occurred in season
2, I think, where a character who suffers a grisly fate in <i>Red Dragon</i> suffers a similar fate prematurely, and at the hands of
someone else. During season 3, as <i>Red
Dragon </i>was being adapted, it brought to mind the question “How on earth can
they adapt that character’s role/death without making it feel redundant?” The
way I saw it, the only possible solution was to omit the character’s role
altogether, but I couldn’t see how the story would work without it. When
episode 12 of season 3 aired last week, I discovered that the writers had come
up with a clever compromise which kept the role intact, but which offered a few
grisly twists of its own.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Chris:</b> One of the
great achievements that <i>Hannibal</i> has
earned is successfully answering the question: Who was Hannibal Lecter before
he was jailed, and why didn't anybody know he was a serial killer?<span style="background: white; color: #141823; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In <i>Silence</i>,
Anthony Hopkins brilliantly played Lecter as a caged beast, who asserted his
authority and maintained a level of power through intellectual battles,
attitude, and memories of past violent actions.
Brian Cox similarly showed Lecter as trying to intimidate through
fear. Some critics expressed concern
with the novel <i>Hannibal</i>, because when
Lecter was on the outside, he was just another serial killer who used gruesome
means to achieve his ends.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The television series <i>Hannibal</i>
takes a different tactic to showing Lecter's power– As the series opens, no one
knows his secret, and he can present himself to the world as a refined gourmet,
sophisticate, and respected mental health professional. Since the viewer knows what Lecter is, we
catch all of his double entendres, and we see the darkness, but the other
characters, all trained in hunting criminals do not? Why is this?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Perhaps the answer is that Lecter can be very charming. Mads Mikkelsen's Lecter, for the first two
and a half seasons, cannot present himself as a figure of demonic evil in order
to intimidate and disturb. To survive,
Lecter has to pass as a normal human being, though as we learn, his
"person suit" does not fit very well, and he must shed it frequently
to satisfy his twisted urges.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In <i>Hannibal</i>'s
first season, we can see why Lecter and Graham could be good friends– they both
have uncanny insight into the human mind.
In the second season, we see why they make excellent enemies– they both
have ruthlessness and single-minded determination. In the third season, we see why they are
obsessed with each other. In the famous
line from the novel, not used in the first five episodes of the <i>Red Dragon</i> arc, Lecter and Graham are
"just alike."<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the book and the two movies, the "just alike"
line is the first serious wound Lecter inflicts upon Graham. Lecter and Graham both understand evil and
murder and violence. Lecter embraces
this, but Graham is repelled by his own knowledge of human darkness, and the
thought that he could have any similarity to a serial killer is anathema to
him. Graham wants to see Lecter as a
horrendous "other," whereas they are truly dark and light sides of
the same coin.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After three seasons of <i>Hannibal</i>,
the "just alike" like would have no real impact. If Lecter were to say that to Will, Will
would probably just shrug and say, "Well, duh!" Of course they're brothers under the skin–
that's clear. The Season 3 Will accepts
and understands this, though he doesn't like it. With <i>Hannibal</i>'S
habit of sophisticated inversion, I would not be surprised if the final episode
ended with Will telling Hannibal that they are "just alike,"
reflecting either WIll's acceptance of his own darkness, or potentially
offering Hannibal an avenue towards redemption that he will never take.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Patrick:</b> Another
successful element of the show is that it really shows you how much of a toll
it takes on Will to hunt criminals. While reading <i>Red Dragon</i>, I got annoyed when Will would sit in a corner and
whimper about how hard it was to do what he does – people are gonna die here,
Will, now get back to work! But throughout its three seasons, the show has
magnificently portrayed a descent into insanity and back. In season 1, Will
mentally disintegrates at the hand of Dr. Lecter, who knows precisely which
buttons to push. Throughout season 2, Will struggles to put himself together,
only to have Dr. Lecter there at every turn, actively trying to prevent him
from doing so. (A shattered teacup is the metaphor the show goes with.) By the
midway point of season 3, when the <i>Red
Dragon </i>adaptation begins, Will appears to have it all together – he’s got a
wife and child, a bunch of dogs… it’s the life the old Will Graham would have
been proud of. But as the hunt for the Tooth Fairy continues, it becomes clear
that Will is still mentally fragile, and Dr. Lecter is eager as ever to
experiment with Will’s life, even while remaining caged.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thus, the effect of the show is that when Will is about to
visualize the latest crime from the killer’s perspective, instead of you
wanting him to speed things along and catch the killer already, you almost want
to grab him by the arm and say “Are you crazy? Don’t do this! You know what
happened last time!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Throughout the show, Hannibal Lecter acts as the show’s
inverted moral compass. Everything around him may change, but you can count on Hannibal
always being a figure of evil, corrupting those around him. And you can see
this at work by looking at the series’ other candidates for potential moral
compass. Will Graham mentally disintegrates at the hands of Dr. Lecter, and
when he puts himself back together, there are a few pieces of his humanity
missing. He comes back darker, more dangerous than before. Will’s professional
colleague, Alana Bloom, goes to bed with Hannibal (literally and
metaphorically) and emerges in season 3 as a henchman for the psychotic Mason
Verger, willing to track Hannibal down so that Verger can get revenge. For the
majority of the series, it seems that the moral compass of the show is Jack
Crawford, but he too stumbles and falls, succumbing to temptations which the
Jack Crawford of episode 1 would have laughed off. In fact, at one point in
season 3, the character with the moral high ground appears to be Raul Esparza’s
Dr. Frederick Chilton, a scumbag from the beginning to the end, always looking
to make a quick buck off the latest “freak” in his legally-approved freak show
of a psychiatric institution.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Chris:</b> Like <i>Breaking Bad</i>, <i>Hannibal</i>'s central character development revolves around the
Chestertonian view expressed in <i>The
Flying Stars</i> that men cannot simply maintain a level of evil– that road
goes down and down. One sin leads to another, and the only way to escape is to
flee from evil. But once Hannibal Lecter is in your life, it's very hard to get
him out. This is one of the issues that the fandom on <i>Hannibal</i> or <i>Dexter</i> often
misses.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Many fans seem to believe that there can be such a thing as
a tame serial killer– a sociopath that you can keep as a buddy for amusement–
Hannibal Lecter can be viewed as the sort of murderer who you can invite to
parties, share amusing anecdotes with, and kick back a few Chiantis. It's
important to realize that the friendships between Lecter and the other
characters are never on equal terms. All of the people in Lecter's orbit fall
into two categories: potential victims and lab rats.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of these two groups, the potential victims are perhaps the
luckier ones. They only lose their lives– or perhaps a piece or two of their
anatomy. The lab rats tend to lose their souls.
Lecter delights in setting up situations that turn people into killers,
or to release their darker instincts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One character, Dr. Bedelia du Maurier, is Lecter's own
psychiatrist, but over the course of the series it is unclear whether she is
his victim, partner, nemesis, or soul mate.
Early in season 3, it's implied that Bedelia is studying Lecter in his
natural habitat, much like Jane Goodall amongst the chimpanzees. If evil can be fascinating, it can also be a
trap. Hannibal makes it clear to Bedelia
that there is a fine line between observing and participating, but it's obvious
that observation is merely a sin of omission.
Letting a killer run free is to become complicit in creating evil
actions, rather than merely viewing them.
A historian can study the atrocities of evil regimes of the past without
adding to them. One cannot simply sit
back and watch an active serial killer work without becoming an accessory.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Lecter knows that a conscience isn't killed with a single
blow. It's poisoned slowly over time.
The pentultimate episode of the series sees the "good" guys (Will,
Alana, Jack) considering a fourth person as an expendable loss for the greater
good in catching the Red Dragon. In a
game of chess, the goal is to protect the king, and place the other king in checkmate. A clever chess strategist can sacrifice
pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, and even a queen in the service of the
king. As long as the opposing king is
checkmated, losses are acceptable. But
in real life, the loss of a single human life is not a morally viable
option. This illustrates the moral
slide– at the start of season 1, an ill-fated character would have been seen as
an annoyance, but an annoyance who deserved to live. By the end of season 3, this character is
treated as an expendable pawn, or as a piece of cheese in a mousetrap. This is the heart of the corruption fueled by
Lecter. He makes people view other
people as much less human.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Patrick:</b> Sadly, <i>Hannibal</i> was cancelled by NBC earlier
this year as season 3 was in the process of airing. It seems that Bryan Fuller
now has at least two shows to his credit — the other being <i>Pushing Daisies</i> — which, despite being absolutely brilliant, got
cancelled far too soon.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There was a lot to like about <i>Hannibal</i>, and I will miss tuning in. There was so much to like. The
stories were good, even those "filler" episodes or the
killer-of-the-week episodes, which grow so tiring in other crime dramas. The
visuals were created lovingly, and had a dream-like quality to them which was
most appropriate to the more nightmarish crime scenes the show explored. (Also,
due to the show being on NBC, I think network standards prevented the show from
pushing the gruesome visuals too far.) The acting was brilliant all around — Mads Mikkelsen made for a worthy successor to Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne delivered his finest performance in years, and Hugh Dancy quite
simply brought Will Graham to life.</div>
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I look back now on my reservations about <i>Hannibal</i>, and I realize there was
nothing to fear. The show was put together by a team determined to tell a good
story, and I think they succeeded brilliantly. This was a prequel which told
you who Hannibal Lecter was on the outside, how he got caught, and it left you
wanting to see more. <o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-67110582575380310312015-08-25T15:25:00.002-04:002015-08-25T15:25:58.304-04:00V is for Vampire<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoHnWN5UbrOU-T030-TlINUwknxMHYX3N7Dtrohcg885UjqhQuPbZijkrML_6PVGHCQyEA3GuMIFRNqckJAKTiB-RXpZCka2laZwDxHQi9LXVtWNQIhb_6j36ZDgQcfjSpO0qwgL2k6qo/s1600/masque+du+vampire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoHnWN5UbrOU-T030-TlINUwknxMHYX3N7Dtrohcg885UjqhQuPbZijkrML_6PVGHCQyEA3GuMIFRNqckJAKTiB-RXpZCka2laZwDxHQi9LXVtWNQIhb_6j36ZDgQcfjSpO0qwgL2k6qo/s320/masque+du+vampire.jpg" width="210" /></a>It’s September 1901, and the small village of Cleverley is
gripped with panic. It started with children telling wildly improbable stories –
a sinister face pressed against a window, a man appearing out of nowhere from a
mysterious greenish fog, a sinister figure seen near a cemetery undoing the
knots on a piece of string… But when a young girl narrowly escapes a vicious
assault, the villagers gather at the cemetery and make a shocking discovery. One
of the family crypts has been left wide open, and two of the coffins inside
have been vandalized. The corpses inside have been impaled through the heart
with a wooden stake… and although both have been dead for many years, one of
the bodies looks like it has been dead for only a few weeks.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The two vandalized corpses are the two deceased wives of a
Russian count, the subject of many a malicious rumour in the village. It is
said that his wives, before their deaths, developed a taste for human blood,
and one of them even was implicated in the death of a child. And wife number 3
is looking alarmingly pale lately… and has taken to wearing a scarf around her
neck.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Never fear, for Owen Burns is nearby. He is investigating
the death of a Catholic priest, whose last act was to hear a dying man’s
Mysterious Last Confession. He makes a connection to an unsolved murder case
which took place in a locked-room. Before long, a similar locked-room murder takes
place, sending Owen Burns and his partner-in-crime, Achilles Stock, to
Cleverley. There, they discover that the main suspect in the locked-room
mystery is our friend the Russian count… an alleged vampire!</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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Thus kicks off <i>Le
Masque du vampire </i>(The Mask of the Vampire), the newest Paul Halter novel. It
was published at the end of August 2014, and as far as I can tell it is Halter’s
first attempt to incorporate vampires into one of his mysteries. It’s a pretty
good go of it, in terms of setting up the mystery – the second locked room
murder takes place with three witnesses in the vicinity, who swear that the
killer turned into smoke and vanished up the chimney. Another intriguing element
of the mystery is how the Count’s reflection was not seen in a mirror when he walked
through a door – even though the door in the mirror opened and closed in unison
with the real-life door, and subsequent experiments showed that anyone opening
the door would have been visible in the mirror!</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAg61KSlTinnWma19tyciYtSP0fEuBkRFdJj39ON4_aMvga9eHFwBv6Q7L3Ci-Q-ulR6uQhnJS4i8l4SaOCV3QaB5CHlPbJKHgNDj4Gjw96-2I2lS-0ngkH7MCpwXxIsIpHODLaIuvA3Q/s1600/Paul+Halter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAg61KSlTinnWma19tyciYtSP0fEuBkRFdJj39ON4_aMvga9eHFwBv6Q7L3Ci-Q-ulR6uQhnJS4i8l4SaOCV3QaB5CHlPbJKHgNDj4Gjw96-2I2lS-0ngkH7MCpwXxIsIpHODLaIuvA3Q/s1600/Paul+Halter.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Author Paul Halter</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I decided to read this book, instead of a translated Halter novel,
because it was the only one I had with me at the time, and I really wanted to
read something in French. I try to do this regularly in order to keep up with
the language. I bring this up because my main difficulty with the book has to
do with my reading it in French. One of the locked-room mysteries has a
solution which can be classified under the technical/mechanical variety… and I
quite frankly didn’t understand one bit of it. I’m bad enough at understanding
these tricks to begin with (I did not do well in my physics classes), and reading
the solution to one in my third language just piled up the confusion even
higher for me. I kind of understand the gist of half of the solution, but I’m
completely baffled as to the other half and how the two fit together. As a
result, I felt dissatisfied with the solution to this locked room murder. That's on me, though.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Fortunately, the other mysteries have much better solutions.
I particularly liked the mystery of the count’s invisible reflection, which was
ingenious and magnificently simple. The second locked-room mystery is more on
the complex side, but I liked it, even though I tumbled to the nature of the
trick (minus exact specific details).<o:p></o:p></div>
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This book was a good read, but I can’t help but feel it was
a little too long for its own good. It is just over 300 pages long, and I think
the pacing would have been tremendously improved if 50 pages or so had been
excised. It is much better in this department, though, than 2013’s <i>The Indian Tomb</i>, which dragged on for
quite a bit before a meaty crime was introduced.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This mystery is solved by Owen Burns, and I like him very
much. Of Halter’s two series detectives, Burns seems to me the more original,
the more colourful. It also gives Halter the chance to tell a story without too
many useful forensic clues (e.g. fingerprints). However, if you read this book
as a historical mystery you will be disappointed. The characters are very much
modern products, and do not act like people who lived in 1901 England. As a
result, there’s very little historical colour. I’m personally fine with this in
this case, because Halter is striving for an entertaining story, not
authenticity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Overall, I enjoyed this latest offering from Halter. His
atmospheric work is very good in this book, and helps make the mystery more
intriguing. Most of the impossibilities have good solutions, and vampire lore
is effectively incorporated into the plot. Plus Owen Burns is fun as usual. It’s
one of Halter’s better works in recent years. Though not on the same level as
some of his masterpieces, it’s just as good as (or better than) <i><a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/2011/12/murder-has-no-language-barrier.html">The
Seven Wonders of Crime</a></i> or <i><a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/2011/05/ce-sont-des-traces-de-sang.html">The
Tiger’s Head</a></i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-11835974999650850892015-08-15T21:27:00.003-04:002015-08-16T08:41:09.489-04:00Case Closed: Volume 39<div class="MsoNormal">
Once upon a time, there was an avid fan of detective fiction
named Patrick. Patrick did not yet have a blog named <i>At the Scene of the Crime</i>. Back in this Dark Age, in order to talk
with like-minded mystery fans and find out about book recommendations, Patrick
frequented several Internet forums, where he learned to refer to himself in the
third person. On one of these forums, he was introduced to a manga series
called <i>Case Closed</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs3pgFapjs6t33Vgd0Cul2gaTnoBBo-cICPAWC7c7boKH2ZpRLKwNsjF1SGuXUF2NOVywDQFBz11Pgkv19rykHKvZAAvvTtl6nPdz0JtLpUUVMdojNXI1RLe7VoQM2DirpWObohDVPccM/s1600/case+closed+39.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs3pgFapjs6t33Vgd0Cul2gaTnoBBo-cICPAWC7c7boKH2ZpRLKwNsjF1SGuXUF2NOVywDQFBz11Pgkv19rykHKvZAAvvTtl6nPdz0JtLpUUVMdojNXI1RLe7VoQM2DirpWObohDVPccM/s400/case+closed+39.jpg" width="266" /></a>Okay, I’m dropping the third-person narration now. When I
first started to read <i>Case Closed</i>, it
was love at first sight, and I read absolutely everything that had been
translated into English to that point within a month. This was my first serious
exposure to manga, and I remember that learning to read the images right-to-left
was a bit of an adjustment. Yet at the end of the day, I loved adored the visuals
of <i>Case Closed</i>. I loved the
characters. And I thought many of the mysteries were imaginative, intriguing,
and some of them are among the most ingenious mysteries I’ve ever encountered.
(Seriously, the locked room in volume 19 is something I <u>still</u> remember.)
The only entry in the series which I reviewed on this blog was <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2011/07/case-closed-volume-38.html">Volume
38</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And then… stuff happened. At first, my library didn’t purchase
Volume 39 upon publication, and I was forced to wait. And then other books
popped up on my radar. I started reading even more contemporary mysteries. And <i>Case Closed</i> was set aside… but not
forgotten. (I couldn’t have forgotten if I wanted to, what with <a href="http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.ca/search/label/Case%20Closed%20aka%20Detective%20Conan">reviews
popping up regularly</a> on <i>Beneath the
Stains of Time</i>.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then a few weeks ago, I discovered to my delight that this
series is available, in its translated entirety, for the Kindle. The advantage
to this is that I can purchase a volume in this series for as little as $5.
Thus, I can support an author and a series that I genuinely admire. And now
that I’ve a little spare time, that’s exactly what I did, purchasing and
reading <i>Case Closed: Volume 39</i>.<br />
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>The Lure of the Red
Horse</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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The first story in Volume 39 takes up 5 out of 11 “chapters”.
In it, Conan teams up with his friend Harley to solve the case of a serial
arsonist who is burning buildings in numerical order – first burning down a
building in a block 1, then block 2, etc. The arsonist leaves behind a calling
card, a red horse – “red horse” having been an old piece of Japanese slang for
an arsonist. Is the firebug leaving a message for a senior detective, someone
who would be familiar with that term? The game becomes far more deadly when the
firebug’s newest fire leaves a charred corpse among the building’s smoldering
ruins.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is a very good story – it’s an explicit homage to
Agatha Christie, especially one of her most famous books. Indeed, it’s remembering
Christie’s book that sets Conan and Harley on the track to finding the
arsonist. Yet the story does not confine itself to <s>rip-off</s> strict homage
territory – it’s a good story on its own merits, and it made for a really
enjoyable re-introduction to the series.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>A Friendship Torn
Apart</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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At three chapters long, this is a standard-length tale in
which Conan and his friends encounter a group of college students gathered for
their last holiday together before they graduate. Camaraderie is in the air… or
at least, it is until one of the students turns up dead as the result of an
unfortunate bicycle accident. But this being a mystery, all accidents are
inherently suspicious, and Conan soon unravels the murderous truth at work…<o:p></o:p></div>
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This was a satisfying story. The culprit is a little bit
obvious, and the trick behind the accident is not a revolutionary one. But it
was all woven together competently, there was some good comic relief, the
culprit’s motive was a compelling one, and I liked rediscovering Conan’s
friends, who form the “Junior Detective League.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>A Little Client</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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A famous child actor shows up to Richard Moore’s office. It
turns out he was abandoned by his mother at a temple when he was a year old.
His mother has been writing postcards to the star, and he tells Moore he wants
to find her. They follow the clues to a hotel, looking for the star’s mother,
but they are not the only ones – a slimy reporter is already at the scene,
eagerly waiting to write the scoop of the century. Unfortunately, he won’t be
doing any writing… because he is murdered. There are three female suspects, and
a visual clue plays a big part in the case. All in all, it’s a decent story. I found
the set-up a little bit odd, since it relies on the testimony of a witness who
was less than one year old. The murder weapon is also odd – I’m not sure this
would work to the desired lethal effect. But the former is necessary for there
to be a story, and the latter is not the essential element of the story. All
things considered, it’s a good story, but far from the best this series has
produced.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
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Overall, returning to <i>Case
Closed: Volume 39 </i>after all this time was like returning to a city a few
years after moving away, and visiting an old friend. I really enjoyed myself,
and with luck, I’ll be revisiting this series somewhat more often.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<i>Note on the Kindle edition: Fun fact -- the right-to-left order of the manga books is preserved in the Kindle edition. So, instead of the usual swipe/push on the right side of the screen in order to get to the next page, I had to swipe/push on the <u>left</u> side of the screen. This was a good way to preserve the right-to-left reading experience. Also, the quality of the Kindle book was very good - to me, it was just like reading the manga in physical "</i>book<i>-book" format.</i></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-84115484997269023452015-08-12T16:24:00.000-04:002015-08-12T16:24:10.297-04:00Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen...<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikqjHolzEznVcV_obVWfBqde2NugSB2AfqB4ljFJx9BWU27EGQV8nWK1TKYNLVvdoIaDaiWa2HdDLRC7aQVMeUNUGUv8FMnviXoFQMrdwhEEd2VZ234O1t9nELKNBfSXRNKU0eNnQ_oJU/s1600/truffle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikqjHolzEznVcV_obVWfBqde2NugSB2AfqB4ljFJx9BWU27EGQV8nWK1TKYNLVvdoIaDaiWa2HdDLRC7aQVMeUNUGUv8FMnviXoFQMrdwhEEd2VZ234O1t9nELKNBfSXRNKU0eNnQ_oJU/s320/truffle.jpg" width="200" /></a>It’s been a while since my last review, and I’m starting to
get out of practice. I can’t quite figure out how to start today’s review of <i>Chef Maurice and a Spot of Truffle</i> (2015)
by J. A. Lang. How to describe today’s book? Imagine, if you will, a culinary
mystery. Make that a culinary mystery solved by an eccentric French chef named
Maurice, a chef who is extremely fond of eating. Also, make this a mystery
which revolves around the world of truffles and truffle-hunting. Finally, add a
couple of chapters written from the perspective of a pet pig. “Oh, boy,” you
might think, “Patrick’s finally gone insane. He’s seen one too many episodes of
the BBC’s <i>Father Brown</i>, and he’s snapped
and started to read cozy mysteries. Well, maybe we can at least finally get his
recipe for coffee cake.” But you’d be wrong – the recipe is my mother’s, and it
is not mine to give away. You’ll just have to settle for my opinion of the
book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I first heard of this book because of an enthusiastic review
on <i><a href="https://classicmystery.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/chef-maurice-and-a-spot-of-truffle-by-j-a-lang/">In
Search of the Classic Mystery Novel</a></i>. The plot involves the
disappearance of Chef Maurice’s mushroom supplier, Ollie Meadows. This is a
major inconvenience for the temperamental chef. So he breaks into Ollie’s home
to partake of his mushrooms, fully intending to pay of course. But he discovers
that he hasn’t been the only one to break into Ollie’s home, and then he finds
them: exquisite white Alba truffles… yet they have a distinct aroma of English
woods to them! Could they possibly be <i>local</i>
truffles? Chef Maurice decides that if Ollie was able to find the truffles, he
can too, and thus he adopts a pig named Hamilton. They go truffle-hunting, but
they turn up a corpse instead. And thus, the game is afoot, and Chef Maurice’s
inaugural mystery is underway!</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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This book was <u>delightful</u>. It put a gigantic grin on
my face, and I genuinely loved the experience of reading this book. The prose
has a touch of light humour to it, and Chef Maurice made for a delightful
companion. If you were to judge this book by its cover, you’d think this was
probably the kind of mystery which includes a recipe for lemon squares. But you’d
be wrong. There are no recipes to be found in this book (although there <i>is</i> a disastrous attempt to cook risotto).
What you will find instead is a well-thought out mystery.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEileWqYCbWD-rv0LZSwkINRkh0adO80gsAsHHuBkyEKKKASHJV_lKeoSKkKJh3en1q5K7gmLRPkmv0L56UCbyms91VygFLugOJlYyOPwA0WWiKCGy5wpjP4TkYR9HSTm-jrCPATwEDOoDI/s1600/Lang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEileWqYCbWD-rv0LZSwkINRkh0adO80gsAsHHuBkyEKKKASHJV_lKeoSKkKJh3en1q5K7gmLRPkmv0L56UCbyms91VygFLugOJlYyOPwA0WWiKCGy5wpjP4TkYR9HSTm-jrCPATwEDOoDI/s1600/Lang.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Mysterious J. A. Lang (as seen on her website)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The clueing is <i>slightly</i>
on the thin side – I would have liked one or two more clues in the story myself
– but the mystery is brought to a satisfying resolution. You do not feel
cheated – on the contrary, you get the feeling that you could and should have
spotted the murderer for yourself. I have no serious complaints about the
mystery. We could sit here and nitpick details, e.g. police procedure which I’m
pretty sure would never be allowed to fly in real life, but that would be silly
– this is neither real life, nor is it a police procedural. In the universe
that J. A. Lang carves out, this plot <i>works</i>,
and that’s good enough for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Indeed, I found myself very entertained throughout. I
particularly liked the brief snippets we get from Hamilton’s point-of-view –
these are some excellent little snippets written from an animal’s POV, and it’s
work that I daresay Edmund Crispin (he of the non-doing pig in <i>Buried for Pleasure</i>) would have been
proud of. There’s a genuinely funny sense of humour throughout this book – you get
the sense that the author is trying to write a good mystery, but one which will
also entertain those readers who solve the mystery.</div>
<br />
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Overall, <i>Chef Maurice
and a Spot of Truffle</i> was an excellent read. It was entertaining, funny, well-plotted,
and very charming. I found myself loving the adventures (and misadventures) of
this French chef, and I’m eager to read more.<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-55236106870493555522015-07-22T00:17:00.002-04:002015-07-22T00:19:59.778-04:00The Geometry of Murder<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_5ixrveji3DU-cpI2kii9CGm0rILkJZt7FEbmI6nvhsGAfA8jV4pe5cCRg4K8tfAqgvzAwxsBkYFUI9TlPzt86o2euewbXkaSl_EeED5n0HdFK9OTZ5TNaN0LhHldViFB5K14mJoauTI/s1600/decagon+01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_5ixrveji3DU-cpI2kii9CGm0rILkJZt7FEbmI6nvhsGAfA8jV4pe5cCRg4K8tfAqgvzAwxsBkYFUI9TlPzt86o2euewbXkaSl_EeED5n0HdFK9OTZ5TNaN0LhHldViFB5K14mJoauTI/s320/decagon+01.JPG" width="213" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A group of people is stuck on an island, with no way off. Stuck
on the island with them is a mad, cunning killer, determined to pick off the
group members one by one. It’s a race against time, a deadly game of
cat-and-mouse. No, I’m not talking about Agatha Christie’s <i>And Then There Were None</i>. Rather, I’m talking about a
recently-published translation of a Japanese detective story: <i>The Decagon House Murders</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The titular Decagon House is, of course, shaped like a
decagon, and the island upon which it sits was recently the site of a gruesome series
of murders. Naturally, a university’s mystery club (modelled on such a club at
Kyoto University) decides the island is a great place for a club excursion. Thus
the members meet up, each of them known by a pseudonym taken from one of the
great Western Golden Age writers: Agatha, Orczy, Van Dine, Leroux, Ellery,
Carr, and Poe. It doesn’t take long for murder to occur, and as the body count
rises, the list of suspects gets shorter and shorter…</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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<a href="http://www.mylri.com/">Locked Room International</a> has become known in recent years
for its work in the locked-room/impossible-crime subgenre, especially when it
comes to publishing the work of Paul Halter in English. With its publication of
Yukito Ayatsuji’s <i>The Decagon House
Murders</i>, however, LRI has taken a bit of a different step from the usual.
The novel was originally published in Japanese in 1987 (under the title <i>Jukkakukan
no Satsujin</i>), and was
credited with helping to resurrect the Golden-Age style detective story in
Japan (the official term for this being <i>honkaku</i>).
Another book that apparently helped this resurgence was 1981’s <i>The Tokyo Zodiac Murders </i>by Soji
Shimada. Shimada played a big role in the success of Ayatsuji’s book – he
promoted it upon its initial publication in Japan, and he now has fittingly
written the introduction to this English translation.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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This translation comes to you courtesy of Ho-Ling Wong, <a href="http://ho-lingnojikenbo.blogspot.ca/">who runs a very good, informative
blog</a>. Unfortunately, I find myself being only a semi-regular reader of that
blog – I often get very frustrated that I simply cannot read the books that
Ho-Ling often reviews, and thus I learn how my non-French readers must feel
when I review the latest Paul Halter novel. Ho-Ling must be commended for his
translation of <i>The Decagon House Murders</i>
– it is eminently readable. The prose style is easily digestible, and it made
for really compelling, page-turning reading. I was excited to get further along
in the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHYzSUuI2vF3AmfVTSIb4xhJtrjgrgdB-VGwbx519O9S9l3tTrDwES5RNd0sGfGx5fWCuo4vnqpTv0he1SHE2S-SdfDGJVGymQ-oDEt-FBoCZqYQwtZKZgHp9hpvEUL_YufSSf6TAtkDg/s1600/decagon+02.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHYzSUuI2vF3AmfVTSIb4xhJtrjgrgdB-VGwbx519O9S9l3tTrDwES5RNd0sGfGx5fWCuo4vnqpTv0he1SHE2S-SdfDGJVGymQ-oDEt-FBoCZqYQwtZKZgHp9hpvEUL_YufSSf6TAtkDg/s320/decagon+02.JPG" width="223" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From what I can tell, Yukito Ayatsuji has minimal interest
in character development in this book. What propels the book is the plot, and so the
characters are drawn in a few hasty brush strokes. Agatha is the popular,
pretty girl. Orczy is the not-so-pretty wallflower who likes to retreat into
her inner world of fantasy. Ellery has a brilliant intellect, but is
extraordinarily pompous (much like the early incarnations of Ellery Queen in
that respect!). And so on. When this style works, I really admire this – you get what
you need out of characterization, and no more. What fuels interest is the plot.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
And boy, oh boy, is this plot ever a sweet one! Like Eric
Keith’s <i>Nine Man’s Murder</i>, <i>The Decagon House Murders</i> must deal with
the example that Agatha Christie left behind. Simply recycling her ending will
not do. Eric Keith found a pretty good way out of that problem. Ayatsuji found
an even better way.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
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Simply put, this is a stunner of a plot, with an ending
which I simply could not believe when it was first revealed. When I put the
book down, I realized that I had just read a book which rivals Soji Shimada’s <i>The Tokyo Zodiac Murders</i> for sheer
audacity and ingenuity. Indeed, in my last review, I was able to unambiguously
claim <i>The Tokyo Zodiac Murders</i> as my
favourite Japanese detective novel. Now? Well… now, I’m not so sure. Now that
I’ve read it, I have to say that <i>The
Decagon House Murders</i> is a serious contender for that title. It has
everything I want in a mystery. It left me satisfied with what I’d read, and
eager to read more. I sincerely hope that this publication signals more to come
in English from the Japanese <i>honkaku </i>school
– it’s high time that someone wrestled the “Let’s-Publish-Everything-We-Can”
Crown away from Scandinavian crime fiction and its countless imitators. Until
then, you can count on me being at the front of the line waiting for more books
like this.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<i>The Decagon House Murders can be purchased on Amazon. <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01054FDCU">Here is a link to the Kindle edition</a></b>, which is excellently-formatted and proofread.</i></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-24912247839313439512015-07-18T12:12:00.001-04:002015-07-18T12:12:29.065-04:00Clash of Clans<div class="MsoNormal">
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In 1940s Japan, just after the end of the Second World War,
the wealthy entrepreneur Sahei Inugami dies at his villa. Don’t get your hopes
up – his death was a natural one. The “Silk King of Japan”, the late Mr. Inugami
lived a long and prosperous life, and his will is to be read aloud when the
entire family is gathered together. The only missing member is Kiyo Inugami, a
soldier and the son of Sahei’s eldest daughter, and thus the reading of the
will is postponed for a few months until Kiyo returns home.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Just before the will is to be read, the famous detective
Kosuke Kindaichi is summoned to the Nasu region by Toyoichiro Wakabayashi, an
employee at the Furudate Law Office which drafted the late Inugami patriarch’s
will. Wakabayashi’s summons is ominous—according to him, the Inugami clan will
be faced with “a grave situation … events soaked in blood.” Unfortunately,
before Kindaichi can get the man to elucidate just what he means by this, he
drops dead from a poisoned cigarette.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Kindaichi discovers that a central figure in the Inugami
household, Tamayo Nonomiya, has been the target of multiple attempts on her
life. The late Sahei Inugami always favoured Tamayo because he owed a debt of
gratitude to her grandfather, who rescued him from poverty. Unfortunately, his
warmth towards her was never reciprocated by the rest of the Inugami clan.
Tensions reach a boiling point when the will is read aloud, and it is
discovered that it hinges on Tamayo and her choice of a husband. And then, the
murders start in earnest…<br />
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>The Inugami Clan </i>is
a 1976 novel by Seishi Yokomizo, translated into English by Yumiko Yamazaki and
published in 2003. As far as I know it is the only Yokomizo novel available in
English (although I also own a copy of <i>The
Village of the Eight Graves</i> in French). It’s a real shame, because <i>The Inugami Clan </i>was an excellent, intriguing
read which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I would love to read more by this author.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The set-up, with the dead patriarch, the controversial will,
and the resentful family, is straight-up Golden Age. Even the time period, the
late 1940s, fits in with this mould. And so I sharpened my deductive claws and tackled
the problem posed by the author. It’s a very good and complex problem, and I
managed to solve a couple of elements of it, but not the whole thing. I was
intuitively suspicious of one thing from the beginning, even though these
suspicions seemed ludicrous in the context of the story. My intuitions proved
justified, however, and I was delighted at the way Yokomizo managed to swing
this feat of trickery without resorting to the usual avenues.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As you can perhaps tell, I’m trying to avoid giving away any
major plot details – discovering each layer of the plot is half the fun of the
book. So please forgive the vagueness of this review. I enjoyed the atmosphere,
the characters, the depiction of the time period, and the window of insight
into Japanese culture that <i>The Inugami
Clan </i>provided. I really wish more books like this were translated into
English – I would love to read them.</div>
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Japanese detective novels have been among my favourite
contemporary detective novels, as they have often had good puzzles and
emphasized those GAD-like elements. Although <i>The Inugami Clan</i> is not my favourite Japanese detective novel (that
honour must still go to <i>The Tokyo Zodiac
Murders</i>), I think it’s a fine example of the genre, and I can readily recommend
it.<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-18288705760071363912015-07-14T22:48:00.002-04:002015-07-14T22:48:14.100-04:00Poison, running through my veins...<div class="MsoNormal">
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The case of Freeman Wills Crofts on this blog is a strange
one. A few years ago, I read the short story collection <i><a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2011/07/slaughterers-slip-up.html">Murderers
Make Mistakes</a></i>. The stories in that collection began as a series of
radio plays, and Crofts turned them into short stories. I enjoyed the book,
especially the first half, which effectively showcased Inspector French’s
strengths as a detective. And yet, for whatever reason, I never returned to
Crofts since reviewing that book. His name popped up prominently <a href="http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2012/10/hoorah-for-humdrums.html">when
I reviewed Curt Evans’ <i>Masters of the
Humdrum Mystery</i></a>, but apart from that, it was all quiet on the Crofts
front.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So in August of last year, I decided to remedy the situation
by picking up Crofts’ <i>Antidote to Venom</i>,
a book which landed on my radar when <a href="http://prettysinister.blogspot.ca/2012/09/ffb-antidote-to-venom-freeman-wills.html">John
over at <i>Pretty Sinister Books</i>
reviewed it</a> (and directed me to a website where I found a cheap copy of the
book – thanks once again, John!). But tragedy struck, and as I packed my bags
to move to the seminary, I managed to lose my copy of <i>Antidote to Venom</i>, having read about halfway through. Then, a few
weeks ago, when I was visiting home, a stroke of luck occurred – I found the
book, with the bookmark still in place! And so I eagerly picked up the book and
after briefly refreshing my memory on what had occurred, I read on.<br />
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Antidote to Venom</i>
tells the story of George Surridge, the director of a zoo in the noble town of
Birmington. He finds himself strapped for cash, thanks in part to his gambling,
his spendthrift wife Clarissa, and his mistress Nancy. His elderly aunt is due
to kick the bucket soon, and when she does so, George will get a nice little
sum of money, just enough to cover his most pressing debts. And thus George
begins to daydream about murdering his aunt…<o:p></o:p></div>
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Fortunately, before he can act on these fantasies, his aunt
dies of natural causes. But a new problem presents himself: the money his aunt
was to leave him is all gone, having been <s>gambled away</s> poorly invested by
her solicitor. It’s a disaster – how is George to pay his debts now? The worst
of it is, he’s been granted a loan based on the money he was expected to inherit
from his aunt, and Messrs. Abraham & Co. are not likely to take this news
well. And so George enters into cahoots with David Capper, the dishonest
solicitor, in a conspiracy which will bring them both the money they badly need…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Antidote to Venom</i>
begins as an inverted detective story, in which the murderer and motive are
known, but details about the method employed are hidden from the reader. Then, in
the second part, Inspector French arrives on the scene and must deduce
murderer, motive, and method. It’s an interesting experiment on Crofts’ part,
an attempt to write a novel with complex characterization in which George’s
motivations are meant to be as engaging as the intellectual puzzle. And in my
humble opinion, by and large the book succeeds.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The plot is a good one, full of clever and intricate details
which French must uncover through methodical police-work. (That being said, at
one point in his investigation French flagrantly breaks the law, but he’s the detective,
so hooray for justice.) I liked how not all of the details of the plot are
revealed at first, which gives Crofts a “fail-safe” of sorts – if his attempts
at characterization fall flat, there is still an element of a puzzle to draw
readers in.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Fortunately, the fail-safe is unnecessary. Crofts is much
maligned for poor characterization, and even in my positive review of <i>Murderers Make Mistakes</i>, I noticed that
one of the stories included a miser named Ebenezer and a murderer named
Crookes. However, the character of George Surridge is a largely successful one.
He is a man who becomes bored with the drudgery of his life, and decides to
seek excitement in all the wrong ways. One mistake leads to another, and before
long, he’s in such a deep hole that he cannot find a way out. When Capper
offers him a rope, apparently his key to salvation, George clutches at it, but
the tragedy of it is that the rope is actually a hangman’s noose.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My only complaint about this book is that its careful pacing
is suddenly accelerated towards the end. As soon as French gets on the right
track, everything falls into place so quickly that I almost got whiplash. In
some ways, the ending smacks of <i>deus ex
machina</i>,<i> </i>especially George’s spiritual
experience towards the end. Freeman Wills Crofts was a devout Christian man,
and this part of the book draws on that to bring the story to a close. I found
myself wishing that it had happened in some other way, though, or that Crofts
had taken more time to get to that stage. It just feels a little too contrived.<o:p></o:p></div>
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However, overall, I can recommend <i>Antidote to Venom </i>without hesitation. I was genuinely upset when I
lost my copy, and I found that when I found it again, I remembered pretty much
everything that had transpired, even though almost an entire year had passed. I
was eager to finish the book, and enjoyed finishing it, even though I have
problems with the ending. Overall, it’s an intriguing experiment by Freeman
Wills Crofts and shows why he had such a high reputation during the Golden Age
of Detective Fiction.</div>
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By coincidence, this book was just brought back to life
thanks to the British Library’s reprint (dated July 5 2015 on Amazon). This review was not planned in any way to coincide with the reprint. As usual, I blame the ghost of Harry Stephen Keeler.<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-90588181080693845452015-05-18T11:06:00.002-04:002015-05-19T19:40:40.973-04:00A, B, C, D, E, F, G...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ten years have elapsed since the events chronicled in <i>The Tragedy of X </i>and <i>The Tragedy of Y</i>. Drury Lane has gotten
much older, and is frail and sickly these days. As for Inspector Thumm, he has
retired and opened a detective agency, which is doing rather well. More
surprisingly than that, we discover that Inspector Thumm has a daughter,
Patience, who is the narrator of our story.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It all begins innocuously enough. Elihu Clay, an honest
businessman (keep your smart-aleck comments to yourself), comes to ex-Inspector
Thumm’s door for help. It seems his business is doing very well… indeed, almost
<i>too</i> well. He has a silent partner,
Dr. Ira Fawcett, brother of Senator Joe Fawcett, and he suspects the doctor is
using his business to pull some financial hanky-panky on behalf of the Fawcett
clan. Inspector Thumm accepts the case, but with little hope of success –
although it’s widely known that Senator Fawcett is crooked, no one has been
able to prove so in a court of law.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thumm’s daughter Patience comes along for the ride, because
even though she has no role in the investigation she’s a Liberated Woman. She
hits it off with Drury Lane, making a couple of clever deductions about how the
detective is spending his spare time. So when murder comes a-knocking and
Senator Fawcett is bumped off, with the police eagerly seizing on the most
obvious suspect, Patience consults the Great Detective and brings him onboard
to solve <i>The Tragedy of Z</i>.</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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This is the third of four novels Ellery Queen wrote under
the “Barnaby Ross” name. Each of these novels starred Drury Lane, surely one of
the most artificial detectives ever created during the Golden Age. Lane
basically lives in a Shakespearean mansion complete with a feudal village,
which is only there because Shakespeare. I do not particularly enjoy Lane – in our
last outing with him, he proved to be a delusional psychotic with a
Shakespeare-obsession which I’m sure will get someone killed one day.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBeS8eeX0WK3nnctO5SW2F1ZnTQAo0FbeXmVG5bsWmgzdL51we7K_0n-hRDhf39s4BaZXadSMJkfS2dQhfG0tCa3kuz39VZCazkghBj6s0WmVSoiTk9MIP8sXdUUZRvo1pJ626qf9q14/s1600/The+Tragedy+of+Z+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBeS8eeX0WK3nnctO5SW2F1ZnTQAo0FbeXmVG5bsWmgzdL51we7K_0n-hRDhf39s4BaZXadSMJkfS2dQhfG0tCa3kuz39VZCazkghBj6s0WmVSoiTk9MIP8sXdUUZRvo1pJ626qf9q14/s320/The+Tragedy+of+Z+02.jpg" width="202" /></a>I absolutely loved the first instalment in the series, <i>The Tragedy of X</i>, which had an ingenious
puzzle and a very good lecture which serves as the “dying-message” equivalent
to Gideon Fell’s infamous Locked-Room Lecture. However, I did not like the
sequel, <i>The Tragedy of Y</i>. I considered
it a major step down – Drury Lane’s psychosis became more pronounced, there was
an incredible amount of stupidity from the cops and Lane alike, and the
solution was surprising only in the sense that it anticipated Agatha Christie
by a good couple of decades or so. However, <i>The
Tragedy of Y</i> had a couple of excellent points, namely the reason that the
murder weapon in that novel was an antique mandolin.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Now we come to <i>The
Tragedy of Z</i>, and good news: Drury Lane is almost normal in this book. Of
course, we don’t see him for much of the book, which helps matters, but his
SHAKESPEARE SHAKESPEARE SHAKESPEARE obsession is largely absent, and he manages
to hold conversations without quoting <i>Macbeth</i>
or comparing someone to the ghost of Hamlet’s father, which is nice. Sadly, to
make up for this, we have to put up with Patience Thumm, one of the weirdest
narrators I’ve ever come across, especially early in the story. Sometimes, the
writing is just plain embarrassing, and you can tell that none of the members
of “Ellery Queen” was a woman. She is a Liberated Woman, Don’cha Know, but she
is also a member of the genus <i>Womyn</i>, which
makes her silly at times. For instance, when she announces that she can prove
the obvious suspect innocent, she does this while carefully applying lipstick
(because a woman has to look her best, see, and nothing is more convincing evidence
for a DA than a woman applying lipstick while insisting he’s
full of baloney). If you know me, you know that I’m hardly the type to get
offended at a perceived lack of feminism in GAD novels, but in the early parts
of the book, it was a real chore to sit through this narration. When the puzzle
really gets going, Patience settles down, but occasionally relapses into her
silliness. Still, when all is said and done, I vastly prefer her narration to
Drury Lane’s Shakespeare-fuelled mania from <i>X</i>
and <i>Y</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One of the best things about <i>The Tragedy of Z</i> is its stark look at the contemporary American
prison system, which is interesting for both its historical detail and the
pessimism at the life offered to convicts, a concern that is light-years ahead
of its time. However, the very best thing about this book is its finale, which
takes place in the death-chamber of the local prison during an execution, during
which Drury Lane dramatically considers all of the possible suspects and
methodically eliminates all but one. It’s not the most surprising solution in
the world, and I anticipated it by a good 60-70 pages, but this scene is <i>magnificent</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
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Overall, <i>The Tragedy
of Z</i> was worth reading. There are some silly elements, especially related
to Patience Thumm, but Drury Lane is comparatively normal, and the final scene
is really excellent. The social commentary is both unexpected and historically
interesting, and once the story finds its groove, the pacing is very good. The
only real downside to it is the beginning chunk of the novel, where the story
stalls, but if you can get past that you’re in for a pretty good read.<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-9303945766881498082015-05-13T22:31:00.004-04:002015-05-14T13:17:33.628-04:00A Twist of Time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPtitPUzi0kDqh9vv4zdynLtRVeN22ZXwFZmTSAyFwjzlJ6Y6lxQKLA-Lso3jDWXehiGlUB0H0T5OyOfl0xRLlSXFz8Ykc_pczaw9vKSH8CZZiTvJyBm7Gx9J8vMjAjuvpwl5lPMI3Rfg/s1600/fire+burn+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPtitPUzi0kDqh9vv4zdynLtRVeN22ZXwFZmTSAyFwjzlJ6Y6lxQKLA-Lso3jDWXehiGlUB0H0T5OyOfl0xRLlSXFz8Ykc_pczaw9vKSH8CZZiTvJyBm7Gx9J8vMjAjuvpwl5lPMI3Rfg/s320/fire+burn+01.jpg" width="198" /></a></div>
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When Detective-Superintendent John Cheviot got into the twentieth-century
taxi, nothing was amiss. “Scotland Yard,” he told the driver – meaning, of
course, New Scotland Yard. He had no <i>frisson</i>
of premonition, no encounter with a mysterious stranger… in short there was
absolutely nothing to indicate anything unusual was about to occur. But when
Cheviot got out of the taxi, he found himself at Old Scotland Yard… in the year
1829.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Cheviot finds himself part of Scotland Yard at its
inception. The police are not seen as society’s protectors, but rather as a
group of thugs with which high society needn’t bother. Apparently, everyone
accepts Cheviot’s presence in 1829—perhaps he is re-enacting the historical role
of an ancestor of his?—and it turns out that the original Cheviot was trying to
join the newly-formed Scotland Yard.</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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Cheviot can bring his modern-day know-how and investigative
techniques to the 19<sup>th</sup> century, which works to his favour when a
woman dies in apparently impossible circumstances: in full view of three
witnesses, a woman is shot dead. Yet the witnesses can vouch for each other,
and apparently nobody else could have fired the fatal shot. How was it done?<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is the plot of John Dickson Carr’s <i>Fire, Burn!</i> (1957). I like to occasionally treat myself to a Carr
novel, and before reading this one, I counted 14 Carr titles left for me to
read (not counting the ultra-rare-and-I-will-probably-never-lay-my-eyes-on <i>Devil Kinsmere</i>). After asking the Golden
Age Facebook group for opinions, I settled on <i>Fire, Burn!</i> as my next read. I was not disappointed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Fire, Burn!</i> is an
excellent historical mystery. The atmosphere is wonderful, one of adventure and
mystery. Carr does a marvellous job recreating the London of 1829, and his
endnotes (“Notes for the Curious”) inform readers about his sources, and how
his story is based on fact wherever possible. There are one or two rather
surprising facts that come out of these notes, and which ground some of the
story’s more exotic elements (such as the solution to the impossible crime).<o:p></o:p></div>
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As a mystery, this book is good… I guess. Yet I cannot really
praise it, because I was left with a feeling of anti-climax. Though I did not correctly
guess the identity of the murderer (in my defense I wasn’t really trying), I
was let down when his identity was revealed. The way the impossible crime was concocted
simultaneously manages to be ingenious and disappointing. It’s not so much a
shocking revelation as it is a moment of “Oh… wait, that’s <i>it</i>?” In some ways, it relies on the historical setting to mask the
solution, which otherwise might be too obvious.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy9S5UdGflXOwcR3P7yfWryQh3qbmsK7GwHUXQh1q1SsAw-s5VquAa2RJGRtpSqC_ClQjwux9x5JdIBl8bWW5Kx3GuHzB4_Klh9PkQDm5Xo1nog_eHykTWmznH3f-lLRotujeb5U0-SzI/s1600/fire+burn+03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy9S5UdGflXOwcR3P7yfWryQh3qbmsK7GwHUXQh1q1SsAw-s5VquAa2RJGRtpSqC_ClQjwux9x5JdIBl8bWW5Kx3GuHzB4_Klh9PkQDm5Xo1nog_eHykTWmznH3f-lLRotujeb5U0-SzI/s320/fire+burn+03.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
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Why, then, did I refer to the book as an “excellent
historical mystery” a couple of paragraphs ago? What saves this book from being
a mediocre read is the historical atmosphere. By 1957, Carr’s age was beginning
to catch up to him. Becoming disillusioned with the modern world and what
passed as “progress” in it, Carr began to turn to historical fiction more and
more often. In some ways, this book is an escape for Carr as well as for his
reader. On that level, Carr succeeds wonderfully. The most common failing of
historical mysteries is when the writer spends 130 pages showing off all the research
that went into writing the book, adding nothing to the story in that time. (It
is crucial, after all, to learn about the complexities of the tea trade in the
Victorian Era!) Carr manages to be both succinct and evocative.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Furthermore, though not particularly impressive as a “fair-play”
mystery, <i>Fire, Burn!</i> is a wonderful
adventure, bringing in everything from romance to duelling. The plot merrily
zips along, and I personally enjoyed the ride considerably. <i>Fire, Burn!</i> is not on the same level as <i>The Bride of Newgate</i>,<i> The Devil in Velvet</i>, or <i>Fear is the Same</i> (published under the
Carter Dickson pseudonym), but it was entertaining reading, and quite frankly,
that’s all I asked for.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><u>Notes for the
curious:</u></i> By my count, I only have the following thirteen Carr books left
to read:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
13 at the Gallows<br />
Captain Cut-Throat<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dark of the Moon<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Deadly Hall<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Demoniacs<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Hungry Goblin<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most Secret<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Papa La-Bas<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Patrick Butler for the Defence<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Scandal at High Chimneys<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Sleeping Sphinx<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Speak of the Devil</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Witch of the Low-Tide<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-51274529813826820552015-05-09T18:48:00.004-04:002015-05-09T18:48:38.904-04:00Talking About the Detection Club<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig-VlvQp6bjGGsFyVfB295b1aoL42FWBroTvTisi1ElSvJ7Fowp-ZnHSDRh8hS45rgeESo3_hbvJSilOole8j83-EyqYowURpJml-V8pbX1gXjsxQQLvwrvdGCI6LGY_e4v57P0DR47HA/s1600/The+Golden+Age+of+Murder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig-VlvQp6bjGGsFyVfB295b1aoL42FWBroTvTisi1ElSvJ7Fowp-ZnHSDRh8hS45rgeESo3_hbvJSilOole8j83-EyqYowURpJml-V8pbX1gXjsxQQLvwrvdGCI6LGY_e4v57P0DR47HA/s320/The+Golden+Age+of+Murder.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
It is often said that the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction”
took place in between the two World Wars. For my money, such a characterisation
is far too simplified and gives rise to a popular narrative Julian Symons’ <i>Bloody Murder </i>sets out, which treats
Golden Age fiction like some freak of nature which popped up between the two
world wars because [insert pet sociological theory here]. I cringe whenever
this view of the genre’s history is brought up, all too often by authors
eagerly assuring you that their stuff transcends all that silly puzzle nonsense
and Asks Really Deep Questions <i>[translation: There Is No Plot]</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The truth is, the Golden Age was a time of great variety and
experimentation within the genre, and The Detection Club was formed in the late
20s in England. The exclusive club gave authors a chance to socialize, and since
membership was attained only by secret ballot, it was also a way to ensure the
quality of the genre remained high. Martin Edwards’ <i>The Golden Age of Murder</i> looks at the men and women who were members
of The Detection Club during the Golden Age. It’s an enormous project, one
which might overwhelm a lesser man.<br />
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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The good news is, it’s a great read. This book is a love
letter to the classic books and authors. Martin Edwards has clearly read his
stuff and knows a lot about it. He examines the members of the Detection Club
and looks at their work and how it reflected their desire to innovate. He talks
about people like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, but he also
extensively discusses the work of such members as Henry Wade and Anthony
Berkeley.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The book is written with enthusiasm, warmth, and humour. Along
the way, Martin Edwards debunks several false narratives about the Golden Age.
For instance, he denounces the oft-parroted claim that this was a time
dominated by “Crime Queens” (i.e. Sayers, Allingham, Christie, Marsh, and
Josephine Tey for bonus points). He proclaims such a view as lazy scholarship,
and instead takes the time to seriously look at neglected writers such as John
Rhode, Freeman Wills Crofts, and John Dickson Carr.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There are limitations to a project like this. Despite the
book’s enormous size, Edwards cannot cover <i>everything</i>.
His scope requires the omission of some things and the considerable
simplification of others. Martin Edwards limits the scope of the “Golden Age”
to the period in between the two world wars, but this is likely due to the limitations
necessary for the publication of the book. I would personally argue for a view
of the Golden Age that extends throughout the 1940s. Another victim of simplification
is G. K. Chesterton. A recent biography of Chesterton by Ian Ker ran to 784
pages—I’m <u>still</u> in the process of reading it—whereas <i>The Golden Age of Murder</i> is
comparatively slim at a mere 448 pages. I would argue that Chesterton is still well
remembered for his spiritual writing, especially in Catholic circles, whereas
in the course of the book Edwards claims that he is more remembered for the
creation of Father Brown. However, if this is the extent of the criticism I can
give the book, I think Martin Edwards has done his job very nicely indeed. (For
instance, I was very uncharitable towards P. D. James’ <i>Talking About Detective Fiction</i>.)<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
I was particularly delighted at all the true-crime scholarship throughout the book. Martin Edwards has done an absolutely brilliant job digging through the true crimes which inspired these writers and some of their plots. There are some familiar cases, such as the Dr. Crippen affair and the Charles Bravo poisoning, but then there are some cases which are much more obscure, such as the death of Cecil Hambrough (which may or may not have been murder), or the murder of Emily Kaye.</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZP6IDb2ycHHcUkN3YEhfCE26ht7XS5o98a1xDyo4et2VzuDr95asCy9A_266z77uXSjey3A9xbFyzARxk5X7RVqSVQCVVgtNopJOtKug__OYeUfHlQL3TDNN_3ZE1Lbzq5svnWIYV4Ew/s1600/Martin+Edwards.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZP6IDb2ycHHcUkN3YEhfCE26ht7XS5o98a1xDyo4et2VzuDr95asCy9A_266z77uXSjey3A9xbFyzARxk5X7RVqSVQCVVgtNopJOtKug__OYeUfHlQL3TDNN_3ZE1Lbzq5svnWIYV4Ew/s320/Martin+Edwards.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Author Martin Edwards</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I would like to point out one thing: I did <i>not</i> get a review copy in advance. Thus, my
Kindle edition was downloaded to my device at midnight on May 7<sup>th</sup>. As
I write this review, it is currently 6:30 PM on May 9<sup>th</sup>. My point
is, I have <u>already</u> finished this 448-page book, and I found it
irresistible reading, very hard to put down. Martin Edwards has succeeded in
making <i>The Golden Age of Murder</i> a
veritable page-turner. So much of his passion for the genre has been
transferred to the page that it made for a real pleasure to read.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>The Golden Age of
Murder</i> is a very good overview of the members of the Detection Club during
the Golden Age. Though there are some limitations to this project because of
its sheer enormity, Martin Edwards is more than up to the challenge. This is a work
of passion, a work which I hope will do much to revise lazy narratives about the
history of detective fiction. If you are a casual fan just dipping your toe
into the waters of classic mysteries, or if you’re a hard-core fan eager to
learn more about how these great writers interacted, this is an accessible
page-turner of a book for you.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-73647989904940857812015-01-06T05:00:00.001-05:002015-05-19T19:46:09.115-04:00"Gone Girl" Meets "Columbo"<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">By Chris Chan</b><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><b><i><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">(WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE MOVIE </span><u style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">GONE GIRL</u><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">!)</span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><b><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><b><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">In his last post, Patrick discussed the new movie <i>Gone
Girl</i>. A lot of people have a problem with the ending, partly
because there is no satisfying sense of justice at the ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By “satisfying,” it seems that many
viewers are hoping for Oscar Wilde’s definition of fiction, where “the good end
happily, the bad end unhappily.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Personally, I thought that Flynn was being shrewd by ending it where she
did in order to set up a sequel in a couple of years. </span></i></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
My main issue with the ending is that it has to be earned.
At the end, Nick Dunn, his lawyer, his sister, and the detective were all
thinking that there was nothing they could do to reveal the truth, but that wasn't
so. I kept thinking that this would be a perfect set-up for a <i>Columbo</i> episode. Think about it. We've seen the murder
happen, and it's set amongst prominent people. I know it could never
happen, but I was wishing that Peter Falk could shuffle into the house and say,
"Excuse me, Mrs. Dunn. I'm very sorry to bother you, but I just
havta ask ya a coupla questions..." Because there are a few points
that, as Columbo would say, "just don't add up."</div>
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
The first point I noticed is the garage full of stuff that
was used to paint Nick as a spendthrift. The point is that most of the
stuff in there was brand new. I can get that a guy who ran through money
like water would buy a robot dog and be tired of it in fifteen minutes.
But would the golf clubs be totally unused? When a man buys a giant
television set, he doesn't keep it in the box in the garage. He has to
watch it. But even so, I thought of the Columbo episode "Framed for
Murder" (Spoilers about the solution if you haven't seen it. Not the
killer's identity– you know that right away. How Columbo proves it.)
Fingerprints. If Nick shoved everything into the garage, wouldn't
his fingerprints be on everything? Of course, the absence of his
fingerprints wouldn't be proof. Fingerprints disappear over time, but if
Amy's fingerprints, or a hair, could be found on some of the items, that would
be indicative– how could she have touched them if Nick had bought them and hid
them?</div>
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Also, remember that Amy racked up a ton of online gambling
debts to frame Nick, but she's shown doing that during the day, often when Nick
was probably at work or helping his sister at the bar, so he could conceivably
have an alibi for some of the gambling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Onine gambling should leave a digital timestamp.</div>
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And the diary... even after it was burned a bit, you could
probably test the ink to see if some entries were written five years ago or
five days. Another problem. </div>
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Next, there's the hair. Remember that Amy cut and
dyed her hair when she first disappeared, and then cut it some more and dyed it
back to the original color at Neil Patrick Harris's character's house.
What happened to the hair? It would probably be in one of the garbage
cans at the house. If she cut it before she dyed it again, there'd be evidence
that it was dyed to "gerbil" shade, and if she dyed it before
cutting, there'd be evidence of the double-dying. And there's the length
issue. With most of Amy's hair cut off in the gas station restroom,
where's the rest of the hair? According to Amy's story, it can't have
just disappeared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If her hair
clippings are at Harris’s character’s house, they’d be too short to explain the
cutting. If her old boyfriend took it with him for some weird reason, why
wouldn't it be found at any of his other residences?</div>
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Next, there’s the blood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Amy drew a large quantity of blood over time, spread it on the floor,
and then cleaned it up, though purposely not very well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The police have evidence that a lot of
Amy’s blood was spilled on the floor– at least a few pints.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If she’d been hit hard enough to leave
that kind of blood, where is her wound?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Such a gash would probably have needed stitches, and she doesn’t have
that sort of injury or scar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
that blood couldn’t have come from a nosebleed...</div>
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And finally, there's the couple that robbed Amy at the
camp site. It's not clear if Amy told Nick about them, so he might not
know to look for them, but think about it. Do you think that the pair of
thieves would pass at the opportunity to blackmail Amy? They'd see her on
TV. They'd see the opportunity to make a few bucks. More than a
few. </div>
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Of course, Flynn
might've thought about all of these points, and is planning on incorporating
them into the sequel...</div>
</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Bottom line, Amy’s story just doesn’t
add up, and there are enough inconsistencies to raise some eyebrows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Couldn't you imagine Columbo coming
across all of these points to expose what really happened?</div>
</span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaZKcxsUHSQzYyM0GtSUAIc0JB-NMLJVOVyK2980wOrHPpGZF-6dIkfROuQN28RCjmkewLZFQ1jrDk3z5agCPNmNFiSJGgX8trVcfp48c1TcFLvJUPcZP5jDOKA-bJP7C946hYc3WxQSJf/s1600/columbo1-837x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaZKcxsUHSQzYyM0GtSUAIc0JB-NMLJVOVyK2980wOrHPpGZF-6dIkfROuQN28RCjmkewLZFQ1jrDk3z5agCPNmNFiSJGgX8trVcfp48c1TcFLvJUPcZP5jDOKA-bJP7C946hYc3WxQSJf/s1600/columbo1-837x1024.jpg" width="261" /></a></div>
<br />
<!--EndFragment-->Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03343947041898057102noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-29031975461260055652014-11-17T15:00:00.000-05:002014-11-17T15:00:09.138-05:00Gone Baby Gone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkOBcz1STzJvHXjK1ZutOPwD_wKtpSl0hmnErk7w3NrQb_kzMPiZ2H45af5aWfaSYQW-zdpS29LicJj_V4MO_oileDtieTfoQaifNfUeMA_0kjLGm1Vu5yBnwjW_HeFMI5U6YpzhCyMzw/s1600/gone+girl+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkOBcz1STzJvHXjK1ZutOPwD_wKtpSl0hmnErk7w3NrQb_kzMPiZ2H45af5aWfaSYQW-zdpS29LicJj_V4MO_oileDtieTfoQaifNfUeMA_0kjLGm1Vu5yBnwjW_HeFMI5U6YpzhCyMzw/s1600/gone+girl+01.jpg" height="320" width="244" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nick and Amy Dunne have been married for five years. On the
day of their anniversary, Amy suddenly goes missing. Nick returns home to find
evidence of a struggle, and immediately calls the police. Foul play is suspected,
and before long, the media decides to publicly crucify Nick on the charge of
murder, lack of a corpse notwithstanding. Is Nick truly a sociopath as the
media declares, or is he simply handling the situation awkwardly, as best as he
can?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is the plot of the movie <i>Gone Girl</i>, based on the smash-hit novel by Gillian Flynn. Though
the plot may seem rather conventional, the story is very cleverly structured, combining
the main plot with excerpts from Amy’s diary. The picture the diary paints is
one of a marriage which starts as a fairy-tale romance, but with financial
troubles come hard times, and before long the relationship is strained almost
to a breaking-point. Yet the story that Nick tells is a very different one. This forms something of a he-said-she-said plot which is easily one
of the most interesting things about <i>Gone
Girl</i>.</span></div>
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That being said, there is a twist coming. And if you have
any experience in mysteries whatsoever, you know exactly what the twist is before
five minutes of the film have gone by. I truly do not understand why this
aspect of the story has been so hyped-up; it was the very first thing that I
thought of when I first heard the plot idea. Yet millions went mad for the
book, and as a result we now have a film adaptation starring Ben Affleck,
Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tyler Perry. Rounding out the crew is
David Fincher, who has made some slick, fascinating thrillers in the past – I particularly
enjoyed <i>Se7en</i>, <i>Panic Room</i>, and <i>Zodiac</i>.
Usually, I don’t bother with books or movies that are guaranteed to be
smash-hits, but I finally decided to make an exception for this movie. I was
interested enough to see it and see what all the fuss was about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtp_jPUgKWTA-ftewuTSmQxcLqyQObJg4ZXHMWW6TPoIcPY1dYG63R0c2iLljBn9Zhc_WlGpoOawE41TNTNnLlttY7QrzxYMGpc7_24RZPeco0XrdNQ23udzlZXB_IcPXYdqEcufj_jJc/s1600/gone+girl+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtp_jPUgKWTA-ftewuTSmQxcLqyQObJg4ZXHMWW6TPoIcPY1dYG63R0c2iLljBn9Zhc_WlGpoOawE41TNTNnLlttY7QrzxYMGpc7_24RZPeco0XrdNQ23udzlZXB_IcPXYdqEcufj_jJc/s1600/gone+girl+02.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So what did I think of the film? If you’ve made it this far,
you might think I hated the movie. But the truth is, I enjoyed it tremendously.
Though the obvious twist is what it is, the movie really downplays it, almost
as though everyone in the audience knows the twist is coming. Instead, David
Fincher saves his most effective tricks for the final act of the film, with the
tension really ratcheted up to the breaking point. It’s really tough for me to
explain without going into full-out spoiler mode, but if you’ve seen the film,
you probably know what I mean. The characters have been journeying to this
moment throughout the film – and it’s been an interesting moment – and the
final act is full of glorious payoff.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Gone Girl</i> is one
of the best-casted films to come out of Hollywood in recent memory. Ben Affleck
almost becomes Nick Dunne – the role seems tailor-made for him. He’s perfect as
the charmer that Amy falls in love with in 2005, but he’s just as effective as
the darker, more brooding man her diary describes as we get closer to present
day. Rosamund Pike adds yet another excellent role to her resume – she’s absolutely
perfect as Amy and gives the character a layer of complexity another actress
may not have been able to pull off. The real surprise of the show, though, was
Tyler Perry as Tanner Bolt, a calculating defense attorney who knows exactly
how to present the case to the media – Perry is genuinely funny in the role,
delivering comic relief at precisely the right moments without lessening the
dramatic impact his character needs to have in key scenes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik5SDc-iONa0RH-6VsGkJwZrxx_AjUhjdpQdxiVQJfdpSVCGEudunBTV3-pp29mbTseXgwRX7MwQwQxU1OcyoQKikejKNRw7Ar78TEd9DOCHrW8NQ4wXYhG-3dBfEemdRENjhwVOJ3E7Y/s1600/gone+girl+03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik5SDc-iONa0RH-6VsGkJwZrxx_AjUhjdpQdxiVQJfdpSVCGEudunBTV3-pp29mbTseXgwRX7MwQwQxU1OcyoQKikejKNRw7Ar78TEd9DOCHrW8NQ4wXYhG-3dBfEemdRENjhwVOJ3E7Y/s1600/gone+girl+03.jpg" height="211" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have not read <i>Gone
Girl</i>, so I cannot say how the film compares with the book. I hear it’s a
very close adaptation, and if that’s true, it’s probably a good book. The
criticism I often hear levelled against the book is that the characters are
intensely dislikeable. Hey, I’ve heard of worse reasons for disliking a book. Maybe
that’s more true of the book than of the screen, but I thought the leads did a
great job making the characters likeable and interesting. I was certainly
engaged in the film – though I went to a late night showing, I was not getting
bored or nodding off. So the movie did its job: it kept me entertained and
engaged.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Would I recommend <i>Gone
Girl</i>. It depends. If you liked the book, you’ll probably like the movie. I
have no clue what your reaction will be if you hated the book. What if you
haven’t read it and have no interest in reading it? Well, that was my initial
attitude, and here’s the take I walked away with— I thought the movie was worth
watching: well-acted, well-directed, well-told. Gillian Flynn did the
screenplay based on her own novel, and although she’s no Agatha Christie (or
Margaret Millar, for that matter, which would be a much more apt comparison),
she has her heart in the right place when it comes to plot. And if you like the
work of David Fincher, you’ll probably like this movie. I’m not sure I’d go out
and read the novel after having seen the movie – after all, it’s supposed to be
a very close adaptation – but I’m not averse to the idea of reading a different
book by Gillian Flynn.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-25274752140493343932014-11-11T03:51:00.002-05:002014-11-11T10:09:01.513-05:00A Tale of Two Miniseries<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZWRthyphenhypheng_ehAsQBOgxjNQ7iaPPw93pGWY8yTqIc1xmYNggiKf6V2haFfBTubit8CyiCk6Jhyphenhyphen25FXrbsTT-GShnZjh5RGn07Z8gsbolzAXW7UiQbDMgsOoLD1Ysy0ueSnv5Buq5wJKDVAB6/s1600/fargo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZWRthyphenhypheng_ehAsQBOgxjNQ7iaPPw93pGWY8yTqIc1xmYNggiKf6V2haFfBTubit8CyiCk6Jhyphenhyphen25FXrbsTT-GShnZjh5RGn07Z8gsbolzAXW7UiQbDMgsOoLD1Ysy0ueSnv5Buq5wJKDVAB6/s1600/fargo.jpg" height="320" width="219" /></a>2014 brought two critically acclaimed crime miniseries, <i>True
Detective</i> and <i>Fargo</i>. Both
developed a strong fanbase, both were nominated for scads of Emmys, and both
are expected to return for follow-up seasons with totally different casts. Yet while one of the miniseries
delighted me, the other left me cold.
Ironically, the one that left me cold wasn’t the one set in snowy Minnesota,
but in the humid Deep South.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t think that <i>True Detective </i>is a bad production at all, but while it features
strong acting and an excellent atmosphere, it doesn’t live up to all the hype
that declared that it was the Best. Crime. Show. Ever. The two leads were both really good,
when they weren’t being boorish or spouting pseudo-deep philosophy that
eventually bordered on self-parody.
The final half-hour of the series in particular was terrific. Perhaps the most stunning, original
aspect of <i>True Detective </i>was the
fact that every episode seemed permeated in foreboding and a growing sense of
evil and dread.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And for all that, <i>True Detective</i> never really came alive for me. The identity of the main villain is not
designed to be deduced, so the viewer doesn’t get to play detective. One character couldn’t possibly be
telegraphed as a bad guy any more in his brief introductory scene unless the
Darth Vader theme played upon his entrance. The ending has too many loose threads and unanswered
questions. The show is always
well-made, but it’s never truly great or enjoyable. Without Harrelson and McConaughey to anchor the drama, I
wouldn’t have been able to stick with it.
If “camp” is “so bad it’s good,” <i>True Detective </i>is trying so hard for greatness that it often fails
to achieve goodness.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Fargo</i>, in contrast,
comes across as a love letter to the original source material that draws
heavily from the original source material while creating something that stands
on its own. The dark humor is
there, and every episode is peppered with Easter eggs to the Coen
brothers. It’s a labor of love,
and the obvious affection for the Coens’ legacy makes it clear that this isn’t
just a cheap attempt to profit off a classic movie, it’s a desire to expand
upon the fictional world without becoming derivative. In this spirit, it’s in many ways an American answer to <i>Sherlock</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6wA0mV4aOux_dVGN7s-NNPrNZbJHiPshPkLQ6FsYnQs5o7yeGoq0kLEbNopzgfC7DPEWRi-aqi4dnq_cO4g-SgoxhSy__rG5KtaGycukljPD0ExcPzGp1INWSEgshKkEfwftrgJIc792w/s1600/true-detective-poster.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6wA0mV4aOux_dVGN7s-NNPrNZbJHiPshPkLQ6FsYnQs5o7yeGoq0kLEbNopzgfC7DPEWRi-aqi4dnq_cO4g-SgoxhSy__rG5KtaGycukljPD0ExcPzGp1INWSEgshKkEfwftrgJIc792w/s1600/true-detective-poster.jpeg" height="320" width="216" /></a><i>True Detective </i>was
written with a “transcend the genre” attitude. It was produced with the full expectation that it would get
the double-barreled HBO press treatment and become an awards darling. <i>Fargo</i>, in contrast, was clearly made with a lot of people
thinking that, “this could be a very bad idea.” <i>True Detective</i>
really played things safe. It
produced a dark, gritty, crime story; peppered it with a little lecturing about
moral nihilism, painted Christianity in a sinister light, and set the story
around two profoundly flawed and damaged men. It’s critic and awards bait. Perhaps <i>Fargo </i>triumphed
because it was a terrible risk.
Many scenes and plotlines are a whisker away from being a cheap
knock-off, or a lazy homage, but then they take on a life of their own.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While <i>True Detective</i>
features men in a downward spiral, <i>Fargo</i> features men on Chesterton’s moral “road [that] goes down and
down.” Thornton and Freeman are
equally brilliant as men on the road to hell that turns out to be paved with
bad intentions. Their iniquity is
offset by Tolman, Hanks (who completely redeems himself for the sixth season of
<i>Dexter</i>), and Carradine, the
decent, salt-of-the-earth types that you want as your friends. I liked these characters so much I
could have spent a whole episode watching them run commentary to a <i>Deal
or No Deal </i>episode (perhaps that’s an
exaggeration, but the point is, I was always compelled). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<i>True Detective</i> was
trying so hard to peer into the darkness that men can do that it wound up missing
the point of the human condition entirely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Fargo</i> showed
the world at its best and its worst, and against all odds it created something
brilliant.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"></span></div>
<span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Christopherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03343947041898057102noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-23398099719577132632014-09-20T17:36:00.001-04:002015-05-20T00:39:49.696-04:00An Inconvenient Truth<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jIYaYoBCTZJuv7H9ZXQ8cT2FVJuJaeqowG2b95PE4luMo3cK9kX0XSgrGph5zBe5cz4IerUxBhUYZbTKnngdcd1c8F-02ziH2raVmhoemTtFNPmwhsO3fHPcICJP-YTz0YZZHsWT1FI/s1600/isbn9781471912726-detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jIYaYoBCTZJuv7H9ZXQ8cT2FVJuJaeqowG2b95PE4luMo3cK9kX0XSgrGph5zBe5cz4IerUxBhUYZbTKnngdcd1c8F-02ziH2raVmhoemTtFNPmwhsO3fHPcICJP-YTz0YZZHsWT1FI/s1600/isbn9781471912726-detail.jpg" width="209" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Harry Vaughan just got a sad piece of news – his uncle has
died. But then he finds out that his uncle has left him a massive inheritance!
Excitedly, he runs outside… and from there, his memory becomes fuzzy. He doesn’t
really remember anything that happened. He was discovered about twenty minutes
later by students en route to class. He must have slipped on the icy pavement
and knocked himself very solidly on the head. Nobody saw the accident, though…</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It all makes sense, of course. That’s why he has that gap in
his memory. But something makes Harry very uneasy. Only time will be able to
tell whether he’ll ever be able to remember what happened. But in the meantime,
he decides to resign from his job and to go back to his roots in Clearwater, a
quiet little village just outside of Washington. But no sooner does he arrive,
strange things begin to happen. There’s a prowler on the loose, terrorizing the
village, and someone seems very displeased that Harry has come back to town…</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Helen McCloy’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Slayer and the Slain</i> is the book I’m reviewing today, and it’s a pleasure
to be able to talk about McCloy again on my blog. She’s one of my absolute
favourites, coming up with inventive plots, interesting characters, and very
suspenseful situations. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Slayer and
the Slain</i> combines all of her writing strengths, and the result is a
genuinely unnerving tale with a deeply disturbing ending.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That being said, I was able to foretell the solution to this
mystery a bit before it was revealed. I don’t quite know what it was that gave
it away – I suspected the truth early on, was misled into thinking it was
impossible for a very long time, and with about 30 pages to go before the truth
was revealed, I suddenly reconsidered this position. It’s an ending that has
been copied a myriad of times since the book’s initial publication in 1957, but
this did not affect my enjoyment of the book one iota. Though it is a central
part of the book, the truth of the mystery is not the real shocker – what is
truly shocking are the implications of the truth, and the final lines of the
book form one of the most haunting conclusions I’ve ever read.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgydeVyk2u3eyPLNFhLaJ09OnCOgzSCWF9AEzKu8HsP81DeA3zEPE7aVOPY0y2ue17rhT2E9wjs9gojkdkUEHjndzPzxRVNv9miLBtKH6CA-dMpZdqkc0xpStPxxs4_CQrYLIW1dq8MGeg/s1600/untitled.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgydeVyk2u3eyPLNFhLaJ09OnCOgzSCWF9AEzKu8HsP81DeA3zEPE7aVOPY0y2ue17rhT2E9wjs9gojkdkUEHjndzPzxRVNv9miLBtKH6CA-dMpZdqkc0xpStPxxs4_CQrYLIW1dq8MGeg/s1600/untitled.png" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is only possible because of Helen McCloy’s high skill
in writing. She constructs marvellous characters whom you get to know pretty
well, and with whom you sympathize. You want to see the mystery resolved, you
want the source of evil exorcised from the quiet village of Clearwater. And as
the horrid events pile up one after the other, it only makes the proceedings
that much more urgent. Things are made even more uncertain by the fact that
there is no series sleuth in this book – this does not feature Dr. Basil
Willing or any other character from McCloy’s books to serve as a beacon pointing
the way towards the truth. Something is rotten in the state of Clearwater, and
it’s unnerving to think you might get to the end of the book without finding
out who is behind all these nightmarish events.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Slayer and the
Slain</i> is currently available for the Kindle at a very reasonable price of
$3.67 (at least the way I see it on Amazon.com from Canada). It is available
from “The Murder Room”, an imprint of Orion Books, and as usual, the e-book is of
high quality. This is a very good story of suspense, and showcases the talents
of Helen McCloy at her finest. I can unequivocally recommend this to anyone who
wants to give McCloy a shot, but doesn’t know where to start.</span>Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-38855556639945756212014-09-02T16:07:00.001-04:002014-09-03T22:30:00.250-04:00The Anatomy of Murder: An Interview with Bill Pronzini<div class="MsoNormal">
<em>Well, ladies and gentlemen, my move to the seminary is now official, which makes this my first-ever blog post coming to you live from there. (Unfortunately, my Internet access is much more tenuous, which means that I have added less pictures to the post than I'd have liked. I am not sure what this means for future blogging, but I'll figure it out in due time.) It gives me great pleasure to announce that today I am being joined by writer Bill Pronzini, whose work I have tremendously enjoyed and reviewed on this blog in the past. This interview is a follow-up of sorts to my review of Pronzini's <u>Strangers</u>, which I recently reviewed here. Without further ado, below is the interview I conducted, and which Pronzini was kind enough to answer.</em><br />
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*****</div>
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<b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioGA2mb-uHLrLiqR4EiPM1OzNp8kngyxTu5NiDcEa3yY15tU9oDQP6hmKmat9u1GYtcIpiwKFNLif6Wkxw3cPKPUGdKN40KWufQrgh2JNsI9wjtTefOS4-W14Gb9JG6SWOOkSbq7ayhoY/s1600/pronzini_photo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioGA2mb-uHLrLiqR4EiPM1OzNp8kngyxTu5NiDcEa3yY15tU9oDQP6hmKmat9u1GYtcIpiwKFNLif6Wkxw3cPKPUGdKN40KWufQrgh2JNsI9wjtTefOS4-W14Gb9JG6SWOOkSbq7ayhoY/s1600/pronzini_photo1.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></b></div>
<b>1. I have an old
paperback copy of your novel Blowback, which features praise from John Dickson
Carr on the front cover: “An immensely likable addition to the roster of
private investigators.” What was it like being the “new kid in town” in the
70s? Did you ever get to meet or correspond with some of your writing heroes?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><br /></b>When I first began publishing crime fiction, I was one of
the youngest writers in the business.
Now I’m one of the oldest…<o:p></o:p></div>
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JDC’s praise for Nameless, in his review of the series debut
novel, <u>The Snatch</u>, was the first I received from a major writer in the field
and forever endeared him to me. I had
some correspondence with him in the mid 70s, in which he encouraged me to write
more detective stories (I’d begun to do standalones by then, with <u>Snowbound</u>),
but unfortunately didn’t have the pleasure of meeting him. I did get to meet and break bread with Evan
Hunter/Ed McBain, one of my boyhood idols, Fred Dannay, Clayton Rawson, Kenneth
Millar, and William Campbell Gault who became a close friend during the last
several years of his life. The one
writer I regret neither meeting nor corresponding with is Thomas B. Dewey,
whose Mac series was a major influence on Nameless in his and my formative
years.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>2. Nameless made his
debut in novel format in 1971, with The Snatch. Now in 2014, he’s appeared in
his 43rd book. Did you ever imagine the series would be this successful? Is the
series as fresh for you to write now as it was then?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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No, I never imagined that the series would last anywhere
near this long. Frankly I’m amazed that
it has. The reasons, I think, are two
fold: One, the evolution of Nameless as
the focal character and of me as a writer honing (still trying to hone) his
craft. As you pointed out in your review
of <u>Strangers</u>, Nameless is not at all the same individual now as he was in the
beginning; he’s grown, aged, had his personal and professional life altered by
circumstances planned and unplanned, positive and negative. Just as I have, just as we all have. He has been referred to, not always
favorably, as an Everyman detective – one who does his job without fanfare or
glitz, and occasionally in a nonheroic fashion, and whose private life and
relationships are given as much weight as the cases he undertakes. I consider the Everyman tag a
compliment. In my view, the series is an
ongoing biography of a decent, compassionate, reasonably intelligent human
being (I hope) who also happens to be a detective.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg06Pdb7dfJcAFqcz5ld_GvNUxi8cdh49GLnDkVAlRRgB3Y_O6O44_LKQexoOWJu7HoAokEXLaeK-9YHVid-c8kLTFev9nhMVcyrAamKADjf8Kkmazgk0tTA66-REbBd9TlL5U-KKnZ59E/s1600/strangers+pronzini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg06Pdb7dfJcAFqcz5ld_GvNUxi8cdh49GLnDkVAlRRgB3Y_O6O44_LKQexoOWJu7HoAokEXLaeK-9YHVid-c8kLTFev9nhMVcyrAamKADjf8Kkmazgk0tTA66-REbBd9TlL5U-KKnZ59E/s1600/strangers+pronzini.jpg" height="320" width="214" /></a>The second reason the series has lasted lies in the fact
that I make an effort not to write the same book in the same way twice, but
instead try different approaches with each one:
single, double, and multiple plotlines, different formats (the shift
from straight first-person narration to a combination of first and third) and
stylistic tweaks. Experimentation helps
keep the series fresh for me and thus for the reader. Of course, this approach isn’t always
successful. In <u>Hellbox</u>, for instance, I
combined the detective story with an intensely personal psycho-thriller plot,
emphasis on the latter; I thought it worked well enough, but a lot of readers
disagreed. Too emotional, too bleak,
they said, and the mix an uneasy one.
They may well be right.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>3. One of Nameless’
old friends appears in <em>Strangers</em>, a woman we have not seen in the series for a
very long time! It’s not the first time you revisited a character from earlier
in the series – you did it in <em>Shackles</em>, for instance. Why did you decide to
revisit these particular characters?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<span id="goog_162980156"></span><span id="goog_162980157"></span>Partly for the reason stated above: revisiting characters from previous books and
stories is just one more way in which to experiment. Also, I enjoy writing stories which have
their roots in the past. The villain in
<u>Shackles</u>, the former pulp writer Russell Dancer introduced in <u>Hoodwink</u>, Cheryl
in <u>Strangers</u> all interested me enough to want to explore what became of them
after their initial appearances, how their lives changed and what happens when
they once again intersect with Nameless’s.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>4. One of the more
cliché questions authors get asked is “Where do you get your ideas?” But not
every idea makes it to the page. Once you’ve gotten hold of your idea, what’s
the next step? How do you go about transferring those ideas from your head to
the page?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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My novels are character-driven, so normally I start one with
a basic idea or theme, two or three characters, an opening situation, and a
vague notion of the direction I want the book to take. The story’s progression depends on how the
principal characters and their interaction with one another develop. So in effect, writing a novel becomes the
same voyage of discovery for me as for the reader. (The only one I’ve written in which I had the
entire progression worked out from the beginning is <u>The Crimes of Jordan Wise</u>,
coincidentally one of my three or four best books.) Utilizing this approach means occasionally
writing myself into a corner, which then takes more than a little rewriting to
get out of, but that’s a small price to pay.
I do a lot of rewriting anyway before I’m satisfied with any piece of
fiction.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My approach to writing short stories is generally just the
opposite. When I get an idea for one I
work out the opening and the ending, then draft both before continuing with the
rest; that way, with the ending already done, I know exactly where the story is
going and the effect I want it to have.
Unorthodox, I guess, but it works for me. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<strong>5. You are married to
a fellow crime writer, Marcia Muller, and you recently began collaborating on a
series of novels about John Quincannon and his partner Sabina Carpenter
(beginning with <em>The Bughouse Affair</em>). What does the collaboration process
between you two look like?<o:p></o:p></strong></div>
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Collaborating with Marcia has always been an enjoyable
process, since her approach to the craft of fiction is the same as mine. On the C&Q novels, we do a bit more
advance plotting than on our individual books, outlining a few chapters at a
time, after which she writes the scenes from Sabina’s point of view and I do
those from Quincannon’s. Since the
characters were my creations to begin with, I sometimes do a bit of tweaking on
the Sabina chapters for the sake of consistency. This was the method for the first three books
in the series. I did most of the writing
on just finished C&Q #4, <u>The Plague of Thieves Affair</u>, because Marcia has
been working on a difficult plot and tight deadline for her next Sharon McCone
novel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>6. Do you plan out
the events of your series in advance, or do you do it on a book-by-book basis?
Will Nameless be returning soon? Are there any other books you have in store?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirgtfYkFNAIkypR5A4otP45BwryN4EG0ekeG3Z9lYqmgf-tH_8QIQLxFc4r4OYlsx4JwQ7oq4y3yMlMB5skHz7QrzPbQ8UWukS9MHQyjc-qk75D7sE6fTGZYPdpmw2JLk8ZWc1LGrC-oE/s1600/The+Spook+Lights+Affair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirgtfYkFNAIkypR5A4otP45BwryN4EG0ekeG3Z9lYqmgf-tH_8QIQLxFc4r4OYlsx4JwQ7oq4y3yMlMB5skHz7QrzPbQ8UWukS9MHQyjc-qk75D7sE6fTGZYPdpmw2JLk8ZWc1LGrC-oE/s1600/The+Spook+Lights+Affair.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a>On a book-by-book basis, except for personal storylines such
as Kerry’s breast cancer which carry over from one book to another.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The next Nameless, <u>Vixen</u>, has been delivered and will be
published by Tor/Forge in July of next year.
It’s an expansion and revision of the novella “Femme” which Cemetery
Dance published as a limited edition in 2012.
Pure noir, this one, very dark, and atypical of the series in that…well,
no spoilers here. Cemetery Dance has
another limited edition novella, “Revenant,” scheduled for late this year or
early next. The 2016 Nameless title will
tentatively be a collection of four stories, titled <u>Quartet</u> – two novellas, one
original to the volume, the other “Revenant,” and two short stories.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In December Perfect Crime Books will publish a collection of
my nonseries short stories, <u>The Cemetery Man and Other Darkside Tales</u>; it’ll be
available in both trade paperback and e-book editions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The third C&Q novel, <u>The Body Snatchers Affair</u>, is
scheduled for publication in early January.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>7. </b><b><span lang="EN-US">You are recognized as an expert on the crime fiction genre – you’ve
written some terrific books on the subject, such as <i>Gun in Cheek</i>, <i>Son
of Gun in Cheek</i>, or the massive collaborative project <i>1001 Midnights</i>.
And rumour has it you have a pretty sizable collection of pulps, mystery novels,
and other good stuff! How did your love for this fiction start? Any items in
your collection you’re particularly proud of?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">My passion
for crime fiction began at around age ten, when I discovered the Ken Holt YA
novels by “Bruce Campbell” – <u>The Secret of Skeleton Island,</u> <u>The Clue
of the Marked Claw</u>, etc. Far
superior, these, to the Hardy Boys books.
I graduated to adult fiction a few years later: science fiction and mysteries from the
library, and then paperback originals, especially those published by Gold
Medal, in my mid teens. Also digest
mystery and sf magazines, which my grandfather regularly read.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Our house
fairly creaks with hardcovers, paperbacks, pulp and digest mags (I have about
3,000 pulps, half the number Nameless owns) – some 25,000 or so at a
guess. Most of the books are crime
fiction, with fair numbers of sf/fantasy, western, mainstream, and nonfiction
volumes. Just a few highlights: a complete run of JDC/Carter Dickson/Carr
Dickson first editions in dust jacket; similarly complete FE runs of Fredric
Brown and Evan Hunter under all his pseudonyms; and jacketed FEs of most of
Chandler’s novels including <u>The Big Sleep</u>, most of Steinbeck, Cain’s <u>Postman
Always Rings Twice</u>, McCoy’s <u>They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?</u> and
Rawson’s <u>Death from a Top Hat</u> (inscribed).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-74537919520250216922014-08-26T21:09:00.002-04:002014-08-26T21:09:51.453-04:00The Dragon's Den<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijd_ZNVbQKkz9FKQ5m6c34U82_iAhPOWVBTZCihhdZuhNzlZelo7BjKjZehWBuX9Y4NXsfaNeYlE4iKjHyzUPcpznO60wCHxj-eqkggsfwvvprXDV_qD2_t0YaNYim8ysNisyBFYCnJpg/s1600/red+dragon+02.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijd_ZNVbQKkz9FKQ5m6c34U82_iAhPOWVBTZCihhdZuhNzlZelo7BjKjZehWBuX9Y4NXsfaNeYlE4iKjHyzUPcpznO60wCHxj-eqkggsfwvvprXDV_qD2_t0YaNYim8ysNisyBFYCnJpg/s1600/red+dragon+02.JPG" height="320" width="181" /></a>There’s no doubt about it, the killer is a madman. He
smashed every single mirror in the home, and then proceeded to murder all the
occupants, saving the lady of the house for last. He then committed some
unspeakable atrocities, crimes so horrific that if I spelled them out I fear
Blogger would censor this post. But the most frightening thing is… <i>this wasn’t his first</i>. “The Tooth Fairy”
– so nicknamed by the cops because he bites his victims – has done this before,
and if the FBI and Will Graham cannot catch him soon, he will do this again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In order to catch this maniac, Will Graham turns to another
madman he helped put away a few years ago – Dr. Hannibal Lecter: psychiatrist
extraordinaire, gourmet chef, serial killer, cannibal… Dr. Lecter is delighted
to help an old friend like Will… But whenever “Hannibal the Cannibal” offers
his help, you should keep on your toes, because there is often a tremendous
price tag attached…</div>
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This is the plot of <i>Red
Dragon</i> by Thomas Harris, the first Hannibal Lecter novel and the one that
came just before its famous sequel, <i>The
Silence of the Lambs</i>. As a fan of the Anthony Hopkins film version of <i>The Silence of the Lambs</i>, I feel the
other movies in the Hannibal Lecter series suffered from the law of diminishing
returns… and then I started watching the TV show <i>Hannibal</i>. (Quite frankly, I thought season one of that show was some
of the best television I’ve ever seen, but that’s material for another blog
post.) Watching <i>Hannibal</i>, I became irresistibly
drawn to <i>Red Dragon</i>, and finally gave
in and read the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In many ways, <i>Red
Dragon </i>is a fascinating book. The character of Will Graham is particularly
interesting and compelling. But what’s even more interesting is the serial
killer known as the “Tooth Fairy” – Francis Dolarhyde. His reasons for being
the monster he is are a bit conventional – typical childhood trauma, probably
the dullest part of the book – but the man he is today is fascinating. He’s a
scary sort of man, and yet he falls in love with a blind woman and feels
genuine tenderness for her. His feelings for this woman tear him apart
emotionally, and these scenes make for some of the book’s best moments.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdxnVi6mucrwgcH5Kj_GtTMVnUlAGM0yzIjS-decLYj3lFedhNRzTVwpNnzU0SHjO5sTSApXWoM-gUiFLXw1VMnZtCIe2KMn622ATRIVU_nFrtAJeF9U3AzhJAbD9VXwNe1ChBhJfFB5M/s1600/red+dragon+01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdxnVi6mucrwgcH5Kj_GtTMVnUlAGM0yzIjS-decLYj3lFedhNRzTVwpNnzU0SHjO5sTSApXWoM-gUiFLXw1VMnZtCIe2KMn622ATRIVU_nFrtAJeF9U3AzhJAbD9VXwNe1ChBhJfFB5M/s1600/red+dragon+01.JPG" height="320" width="194" /></a>It’s also pretty well plotted. There are some very tense
scenes, including one scene of excruciating suspense that turns out to be a
false alarm. The violence is hard to take sometimes – the fate of Freddy Lounds
is one of the most unpleasant things I’ve ever visualised inside my head, and
the grisly details of the crime scenes made me feel queasy at a few points. But
the book is not being written for shock value; there is a story, and the author
develops it pretty well, with most of the scenes having some sort of relevance
in the end.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But surprisingly, <i>Red
Dragon</i> doesn’t have that spark, that quality of greatness that I was
expecting. Dr. Lecter seems particularly – dare I say it? – <i>boring</i> in this book, barely appearing onstage
and having almost no purpose in the proceedings except to hide a plot point and
shout out some taunting dialogue at one point. While competently written by a
man who put his background as a crime reporter to good use, it’s a book I was
able to put down with surprising ease when I had to. I was hoping for a
riveting read that I wouldn’t want to put down – what I got was a good, very
well-written thriller, but not something that floored me like it was supposed
to.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In many ways, I had the most fun reading <i>Red Dragon</i> and seeing where the show <i>Hannibal</i> has taken its inspiration from.
The show is clearly made by people who have read and loved Harris’ books – the show
is full of ideas and scenes that simply could not be created after a visit to Wikipedia.
But as much as I loved the show or the movie version of <i>The Silence of the Lambs</i>, I just didn’t walk away from <i>Red Dragon</i> with the same enthusiasm.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Having read <i>Red Dragon,
</i>would I go on to read <i>The Silence of
the Lambs</i>? I probably will eventually. <i>Red
Dragon </i>is a pretty good book – in many ways, it’s a terrific book. But it
didn’t leave me eager to devour more as soon as possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
Patrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.com4