OK, a flood of comment spam is one thing. But my email server (not located on this server) coughed up a hairball and I’ve lost about 3 months worth of email.
No evidence yet of Foul Play involved, but it does make me a tad irritable.
My latest batch of mystery books, by Anne Perry, leave me a little puzzled. I’ve written before about her books (liked the Pitt — Cater Street Hangman — but not the Monk) but I may be changing my mind. To the extent that I may not be able to finish the latter one.
The Pitts (Charlotte and Thomas) are a husband and wife team in the Victorian era. He is a police inspector, she “merely” his wife. Perry does a fairly good job of evoking the sense of the period, I suppose. But I’m starting to wonder about a couple of things.
For one thing, her books don’t “feel” like the books and stories I’ve read that actually were written during the Victorian era. There’s a lot more societal detail, and she lays on the atmosphere with a trowel, something the real Victorian authors never did. I suppose a partial explanation for this is that she’s “overcompensating,” she’s trying to emphasize the time period when the story takes place, and cannot (or does not) expect her readership to be aware of what the Victorian detective story actually reads like. So she overemphasizes the feel of the epoch, to be sure we “get it.”
This in itself isn’t disturbing, but there’s an undercurrent I’ve started to notice that is. I’m not at all sure of this, but I’m beginning to feel Ms Perry herself doesn’t really like this period. It started gnawing at the back of my mind during the Monk novel, and now that I’ve done three of her novels (and am working on a fourth) the idea is growing more steady on its legs.
(more…)
This book by Frankie (son of Francis) Schaffer isn’t a new one, and it isn’t new to me. But I went back and reread it a little while ago.
It makes some very good and very interesting points. Frankie isn’t the thinker his father is, but who is? His main point is that Christians are ghetto-izing (that neologism is mine, so don’t blame him) themselves in the arts. Christians are creating subgenres of almost every art form by prepending the word “Christian” to it. And the entries in these subgenres aren’t very good. “Christian movies” (a subgenre close to his heart, as he is a movie maker himself) for example, have lower production values and the acting is worse than in their mainstream counterparts. And worse, the writing and plotting are stale.
Can his premises be argued with?
(more…)
OK, so the secret is out: I’m addicted to Dutch mystery writers. This one is part of the series written by Janwillem van de Wetering about the two Amsterdam cops Grijpstra and De Gier. But the addiction doesn’t just extend to this series. I’m also in love with Maj Sjowal and Per Wahloo’s output, and even the pseudo-Dutch output of Nicholas Freeling. I freely admit, however, for the American market these books are an acquired taste.
In this one, the two cops are called to the scene of an all-too-neat corpse, a murder staged to look like suicide. De Gier beds the widow, and looks forward to more of her, until she insists his cat would have to go. Grijpstra deals with the politics of his superiors in hos own cynical way, adn eventually the two converge on the solution.
The somewhat cynical outlook of the book isn’t the hard-boiled cynicism of American novels, but rather an amused one, coming from a man who knows what he is saying is absurd, but says it anyway because he must if he is to keep his job. And, since he knows he also must catch the bad guys with some efficiency if he is to keep his job, he always finds a way to keep politics from blockinghis path.
Probably not for the average American reader, but if you’re wiling to take a trip into a mindset from a different society, it’s worth the trip.
It strikes me that I’ve stopped talking about books on the blog. Let’s rectify that now.
Double Sin is a collection of Agatha Christie shorts, involving Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, but also including some non-series stories with a gothic taste.
The title story, while a Poirot, isn’t the best in the book. Infact the entire books is a bit of a pedestrian excursion for Dame Agatha. The best story is probably the “Theft Of The Royal Ruby,” a Christmas-themed story.
As always, if you’re after lifelike characters, pass this one by. But if you’re into puzzles, it’s an adeqaute delight.
Powered by WordPress