I finished (finally!) this novel last night. It's a John Dickson Carr, one of his "Dr. Gideon Fell" mysteries (Fell is basically a pastiche of G. K. Chesterton). I've enjoyed the others of these I've read, but this one....well, it got to be a slog.
Carr tends to deal in locked-room mysteries, and the Fell mysteries in particular tend to be ones where it looks until near the end that the only solution is a supernatural one.
This one started out promising - a rather theatrical gentleman was the victim, it's rumored he had two brothers and that perhaps one of them killed him. And then it goes from there....
It's set in London, in the winter, mostly at night. It gets weirdly oppressive and claustrophobic in tone at a point a bit more than midway through - I can't quite explain it but it does have that feeling of everything being sort of closing in and uncomfortable and uncanny. (There is a subplot about people being buried alive, both literally, and figuratively - in a Hungarian prison).
I did learn something surprising: a major religious faith in old Transylvania (which, they pointed out, was subsumed into Hungary after WWI) was Unitarianism. Actually, apparently a good bit of Central Europe had it as, if not a dominant faith, a large minority one. Which surprised me as I always associated it with 18th century New England Deists and people like the Transcendentalists. But this comes out because Fell suspects a character is from Transylvania - and asks her her faith, and she says "Unitarian" and that, plus apparently some vestiges of an accent undetectable to the others, tell him what he needs to know.
Apparently Chapter 17 of this book is somewhat famous among classic mysteries, because Fell lectures on the locked-room mystery - and it seems to me he broke the fourth wall, spoke directly to the reader, and as much as said "Look, we're just characters in a book, so I'm gonna tell you some history of this genre" and it was just strange and, frankly, for me, stopped suspension of disbelief to have a character in a book fundamentally turn to me and go "okay, we're not real, but...."(Also kind of a mind bender, how can a character who openly admits they're not real act real and also address the reader?)
I started out think I'd like it at least as well as The Crooked Hinge (the first one I read), but I think it's my least-favorite of the four of these I've read.
I think also - without spoilering too much - the death count is kind of high, and there isn't the sense of "redemption" that you get at the end of some mysteries. Rather than a wrong being righted somehow, it's just....all the wrongs still stand, and one character is now basically without any family in the world.
On further reflection: my feeling about the novel and the buried-alive subplot MIGHT have been slightly affected by news items; it was about the time when that condo collapsed in Florida that I first hit the "buried alive" bit, and....yeah.
I need to find some nice books without sad or stressful things for times when the news is sad and stressful. Then again: that might be the only thing I ever read forever more, given how the world seems to be going
***
Stayed home today - I had to go to wal-mart for some things and also had to mow (and edge) the lawn. It took a while - the string trimmer, the "string" got wrapped around the inside of the spool and at first I could not get that assembly off, so I used a crochet hook to fish out the string. Also, it's very humid here - not unusually hot, but quite humid, and mowing is a strain (I did it, but by taking frequent short breaks).
I had thought at first of "going somewhere" (Where, I don't know) this afternoon, but I got done with lunch late enough - and I had to go back out to the Green Spray because wal-mart didn't have green onions, and I needed them - that by the time I could have gone, it seemed too late. (And anyway, what would I do? One of the things I'm realizing is that other than outdoor things like hiking, there's really very little within a half-hour of me. What I would have really liked, I guess, if I had had a full day, would have been to go to Whitesboro to the yarn shop, which is now back open in person, but there wasn't time for that. And also, driving when it's this warm and sticky just isn't as pleasant.)
Did....did I notice this before? I don't remember. Or maybe I was more content pre-pandemic with staying home when I stayed home, and close to a year of very little *doing things* that weren't work has affected me.
I mean, I would like a nice museum to go to. Or yes, for it to be cool enough for hiking or going up to Chickasaw (I *could* do that, I guess, just not hike as much? Though it's an hour's drive up there and that's a lot to just go around and look at things). Or something. I feel restless and I don't know if this is kind of how I felt every summer in the past, or if the pandemic did change me in some way, or what. I know I feel loneliness harder - most days I've gone in, it's been only the secretary and maybe one other faculty member around, and sometimes it's hard not to feel kind of like a hermit or something.
I keep asking myself what I would want, but I don't really come up with anything I can easily act on - yes, I could take a day (probably at this point after I'm back from Illinois) and drive down to Whitesboro or figure out some other place to go. But I am also loath to just get in the car and drive; that wastes gas if I don't have a goal of where to go. (I did a *little* of that during the pandemic, but that was partly so I didn't lose all my driving skills. But the thought of driving to, say, Madill, just to go there (there's not really anything there that there isn't here) doesn't appeal.
I think of my dad talking about how he was doing his doctoral research in New Mexico, living in a rented trailer with (I think?) a fellow grad student from his program, how sometimes they would drive an hour into Albuquerque in an evening just to play pinball....and I guess I get it, they would have had even less in that trailer than I have in my house in the way of entertainment.
Though yeah, if there were a place where I could go and play pinball AND that I felt welcome at (AND that seemed COVID safe, or at least people were masked in), I'd go, because being out among people, I need that some times. (Part of the reason I have the television on a lot when I'm home alone - or BBC radio 4 via the app on my phone - is that I need the sound of human voices). Yes, there's the casino, but....that's different (and also it still allows smoking, so that's a no).
I don't know. I do know I want it to be cooler, and to be fall, and for me to be back in a schedule that makes me feel *useful* where I have short-term goals to achieve. Often the summers here feel like they will never end, and not in a good way.
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