Because I came back in to campus to check to see if the four papers that were due at 11 and didn't get handed in had finally come in. (They hadn't) And because I'm procrastinating going back home and reading the last five papers, and then going through all 20 of them again to put comments on them and correct all the awful grammar mistakes. (Some of which I am sure are simply the effect of haste. I really should go to "electronic submission" so I could check the "created on" date of these papers...I suspect some of them of being written in the wee smalls of this morning. This being a paper that was assigned on the first day of classes, back when it was still 110 in the shade....)
I read two books on the train over break. Alas, I FORGOT the copy of "Number, the language of science" which was what I intended on reading. (It was still sitting on the stack of books beside my bed). Luckily, I had two mystery novels (and before coming back, I grabbed a cheap old paperback copy of Little Dorrit that I got for pennies at the Alamo II's used-book sale and left at my parents' house...I was afraid of "what if the train is really delayed and I finish both my books?").
The first one was a Georgette Heyer mystery, "The Unfinished Clue." I admit it, one thing that annoys me about Heyer novels is that the titles often have little to do with the content. On the upside, I LOVE the current paperback editions with their lurid, jazz-age illustrations on the cover (you can see the version I have here). (The illustrations also have little to do with the content, apparently being grabbed from some stock-illustration source, but they're such fun). And the shape of the book - a bit shorter and a bit longer than the standard paperback - is also kind of aesthetically pleasing.
(I admit it: One reason why I would never go to 100% e-books is that I like the physical object-ness of books too well. If the e-book reader is like a sleek, quiet microwave oven, a paper book is more like, I don't know, a gas stove...there's an atmosphere to it and the more some people say it's outmoded, the more I want to cling to it).
Heyer's mysteries are the typical British country-house mystery. She does not seem to have a recurring detective character (unlike most of the other well-known Golden Age mystery novelists). I also find that her books are often a bit slow to get started for me, but once I get interested in the characters, then I get into them.
This book features the Billington-Smith family, consisting of "the General" (the patriarch, and a thoroughly unpleasant man: he blusters, he terrorizes his wife, he's rude to people...), Fay (who is his much-younger second wife), Geoffrey (his son by his first wife - she ran off and left him and he made poor Geoffrey pay for it. Also, Geoffrey is an artistic, rather than military, type, and that bothers his father). And then there's Francis, who is the cousin to Geoffrey, who is a bit of a wastrel but is liked by the General simply because he's "Captain" Billington-Smith: a military man.
In addition, Fay's unmarried sister Dinah is invited to the house party. And a couple known as the Hallidays: him a shattered war veteran, her an on-the-make woman of fairly little moral tone.
And Stephen Guest, a "connection" (business, I suppose, or distant cousin?) of the General who is in love with Fay - but she will not divorce her awful husband to take up with him.
And lastly, there's "La Lola" - Geoffrey's fiancee, a dancer (yes, THAT kind of dancer) who is allegedly Mexican (and the "accent" that Heyer gives her - mainly a sort of syntax that is convoluted and different from the rest - is kind of annoying to read, but whatever. Most "dialect" writing bugs me).
There are also (of course) the servants. And the widow Twinings, who is sort of a leavening influence - she is one person who can comfort Fay and who will stand up to the General. And the vicar and his wife....she winds up playing a larger role than expected.
I think it's not TOO much of a spoiler to observe that the obvious unlikeable character is the one that's done in. But you're kept guessing as to who did it: could it be Geoffrey? Could it be Francis? Could it be Guest? Could it be Halliday? Could it be (no, please not!) Mrs. Twining, who seems to be the sanest character (save for Dinah, who is immediately ruled out of suspicion, seeing as where she was at the time of the murder).
The thing I like about books like this is that they're restful. While the mystery isn't quite a "cozy," it comes close. And the dialog is entertaining though I admit a definite temptation, after reading one of these, to start talking a bit like one of the Bright Young Things (or at least like Dinah, who might not call herself such: she sees herself as a "spinster" (at 25!). And to say things like, "Oh, it's all too ghastly!" or interject "quite" and "rather" into my speech more than I normally do. (It's funny: the other portraits of the minor aristocracy - including the movie called Bright Young Things - makes me think I'd be heartily annoyed by them, because none of them really DO anything other than swan about and drink and play tennis, and I'd get bored by that pretty fast, but the Heyer mysteries make them somehow more attractive. Perhaps it's because she's parodying them just a bit, and turns them into a sort of never-never-land situation).
The other novel was a Hercule Poirot, "Death in the Clouds." Set on an early airplane flight (the book was first published in 1935). It's an interesting re-imagining of the locked-room mystery: the person killed could ONLY have been killed by someone else on the plane (no less: someone in the REAR compartment - presumably the first-class compartment - of the plane). It's a good story, though I admit I mainly read these for Poirot and his commentary rather than for the story or the other characters. This one also has a strong young female character (Jane Grey) who winds up assisting Poirot and (hopefully) winds up with a much happier life than the one she originally had thanks to some things that happen incidental to the case. (Funny how I tend to think of book characters as having a "life" after the story ends - that maybe Jane did go on and go on the archeological expedition with M. Dupont and winds up marrying him).
There are a lot of eccentric characters in this one...the pair of French archeologists (father and son) who seem somewhat excitable, the cocaine-addicted former-showgirl who is married to a member of the aristocracy, a doctor who is planning on chucking his practice, and a crazy mystery novelist with a thing for bananas.
I will say one thing that struck me in both novels - I knew to expect it, knowing a bit of the history of the time, but it's still jarring and unpleasant - is the sort of casual anti-Semitic remarks made. (In the Heyer novel, about La Lola's "manager" - sort of an early Swifty Lazar type. And in the Poirot novel, "M. Antoine" (the owner of the hairdresser's shop at which Jane Grey works) is described as being "no more exotic than his mother being a Jew" or somesuch.) I am aware there was a lot of "casual" anti-Semitism in Britain in the 30s, that it was a whole "they're outsiders" kind of thing, but as I said, it's still jarring. (And makes me wonder what stereotypes we are blind to today that may jar people reading the books of today/seeing the movies of today in the future).
No comments:
Post a Comment