Classic Mystery Primer

I have a guest post up today over at the Readventurer blog, all about Agatha Christie.  There'll be a Part 2 up tomorrow which covers other favourite mystery writers.

Ngaio Marsh: "Overture to Death"

Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh

The stand-out characters of this book are all very unlikeable people. Neat, ferrety Mrs Ross. Bullying, brash Idris Campanula. And judgmental Miss Prentice. It is a book of lonely women; embarrassing, manipulative, needy. The scene where Alleyn and Mr Copeland (two very handsome men) are sharing a shudder over the passions of a woman too blind and lacking in self-awareness to see how unwanted she is, rings very true, but is not a kind moment.

In the larger story of Alleyn, this novel falls after Troy has finally agreed to marry him, but before their wedding, and his feelings for (the small, talented, attractive, intelligent) Troy - everything Idris Campanula is not - serves as a stark contrast. Not one person mourns Miss Campanula's death, but on this re-read I was struck that she spent the night before her death crying and heart-broken.

It's a difficult book to love, but as a mystery it is clearly plotted and worth reading.

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[Experimenting with cross-posting reviews between here and Goodreads...]

Ngaio Marsh: "Surfeit of Lampreys"

One of my favourites.

Alleyn is charming in himself, a completely likeable creature whose quiet intelligence and good manners fixes reader sympathies. "Surfeit of Lampreys" is a delightfully funny book, and is also macabre to the point of revolting.

Marsh sets us up to love the Lampreys by fixing our interests with Robin Grey, charming us along with her, drawing us in to her passionate devotion. Charm and humour, and then - such a horrible death.

I often wonder, at the close of this book, how many of the Lampreys made it through the war which is already a shadow on the horizon.

Arthur Conan Doyle - "A Study in Scarlet"

Having reached the Holmes novels in my mystery collection, I decided they were worth the re-read, since it has been at least ten years since last I saw them.

"A Study in Scarlet" is a particularly odd book - it's our introduction to Holmes, and the first half of the book shows clearly why he became popular. Partly, I think, it's because Watson himself is such an amiable pair of eyes to view Holmes with. Holmes' science is intriguing and the story ambles along well enough.

And then we reach part two, and the melodrama of the history behind the murder made me wince and sigh - until a recognisable name was mentioned, I was wondering if somehow a totally different novel had been accidentally inserted. It's an interesting device, though: the murderer, the foul fiend our heroes have captured, is in fact a hero himself. Any moral dilemma surrounding his capture is conveniently disposed of by health problems.

Reading these older stories almost always involves a certain amount of adjustment. Issues of race, attitudes towards women - they're alien (and yet not so distant below the surface). One thing which stood out to me is that the murderer's attempt to rescue his stolen bride stopped as soon as he found out she'd been married the day before. She was still alive - didn't die till a month later - but the simple fact of the marriage meant he no longer attempted to rescue her. That's unlikely to happen in a modern tale.

Too many forensic shows also made me doubt that a man stabbed in the heart and lying below the window of a room would be so...leaky.

Not a terrible story, but I could happily have done without all of the flashback.

Also discovered an alternate spelling new to me: dumfoundered. Being used to "dumbfounded", I just had to look that one up to see if it was real. I'm going to have to consult the Oxford some time, because 'dumfoundered' claims to mean 'confound' while 'dumbfounded' means 'struck dumb', so perhaps it's not an alternate spelling at all.

Wilkie Collins - "I Say No"

My excursion into ebooks has primarily revolved around compilations of classic mysteries (most of which are out of copyright, but it was worth the $20 or so for the convenience of 40,000 pages all in one big wad). I've a great love for Golden Age mysteries, and the novels I'm currently reading are part of the genre's foundation.

Father Brown proved a little too..."Father knows best"? Or, worse, Father knows best, but isn't going to say until pushed. Not bad stories, but they didn't leave me thrilled.

I've moved on to a patch of Wilkie Collin novels, which are not really mysteries in the modern sense, but more 'moral dramas' with an overtone of mystery.

"I Say No" has a semblance of mystery - the death of the father of the main character, Emily - but most of the drama comes from trying to spare Emily from any knowledge of how her father died.

The opening of the story caught my interest, but unfortunately I quickly became impatient. I especially despise stories which involve keeping hard truths from young girls to 'spare' them and though the "I Say No" is basically cautioning against exactly that course, the actions of the characters frustrated me to an extreme degree. Especially when Emily is hardly a wilting and fragile blossom.

Hopefully better luck with the next book in the wad.