I've written before how I enjoy mystery novels/stories and also tv programs (the British ones are the best - Poirot, and Fr. Brown and the new Sr. Boniface that PBS shows)
I wrote yesterday about the Campion short story I read that made me sad. No fault of the story, it's just the whole situation I described in the spoiler block is something I am thinking about a lot, the "how does someone navigate life like that"
But I'm reading and watching other things.
I'm reading (interspersed between the final chapters of "Wives and Daughters" which is a bit claustrophobic at times) an ECR Lorac novel. She's an unjustly (or so I think) forgotten writer of the 30s and 40s; her mystery novels are generally well-plotted and are quite atmospheric.
This one is "Fell Murder" - set in Lancashire, in farming country. It's nominally a country-house novel except of a different social class than the standard 'country house party of the landed gentry' - at least as far as I am in it, the main focus is the Garth family, who are families who do own a Hall but who sound like they're not terribly prosperous. (And the talk, early on, of how one of the older sections of the Hall - like many inherited estates, it's been built on to over time - was "given over to the mice and the bats" and I shudder a bit at this, having dealt in the past with mice, and fervently hoping no bat ever blunders its way into my house). It's the typical story of the domineering father with adult children (Charles, Marion, the estranged son Richard, and Malcolm, child of a second marriage). Marion is the "one sane (wo)man," apparently - she more or less runs the farm and wants money for a Hereford bull or, failing that, permission to go to one of the smaller farms the family apparently owns and set up on her own, but of course her father keeps a tight hand on the purse strings. Charles seems kind of....good for nothing? Or maybe suffering from poor health? And similarly, Malcolm seems to have the wrong temperament for farming. There is also a young relative (a cousin, Elizabeth, apparently distant enough in relation to provide a possible love interest for Malcolm)
You can probably guess of that set who winds up getting whacked, and not too far into the novel.
What I like about these - well, for one thing, Lorac's writing is better than the average mid-century pulp novelist, especially in terms of her description of characters and landscape (I can picture the locations she describes). Her dialog isn't bad, either. There's also a sort of atmospheric historical quality to these - written during WWII, there are hints of the war's effect even in relatively safe and peaceful Lancashire.
I'm also watching some things on tv. One thing the writer's strike has done and will continue to so, is I'll have to look a bit further abroad for entertainment, and probably content myself with reruns of things until the strike ends and productions begin again (It strangely has the feel of that time in 2020, where everything was shut down to protect the actors and crew, and so the networks did things like go back to showing "generally popular" (and where needed, edited-for-network-tv) movies. Though now it looks like what we will get this fall is
football
reality shows
game shows
reality game shows
true-crime docudrama things
None of which appeal to me, so I don't know. If I weren't watching pennies so tightly (and didn't need a new laptop, though that may change soon) I'd invest in BritBox or Acorn or one of those and just stream stuff.
At least PBS does have a new-ish series, the Sister Boniface Mysteries, which I guess are set in the Father Brown Extended Universe (Fr. Brown himself appeared in an early episode) and while, no, this is not Chesterton's characters, they're still good and entertaining in their own right.
These are set a few years later than Fr. Brown - early to mid 60s, to judge from the clothes and hairstyles (And that's one of the reasons why I watch - something set in a different place or time is automatically more interesting to me than something set "right today and right here"). There's the good Sister herself, and occasionally some of her cohort of nuns, and then the local inspectors Gillespie and Button (Button is Peggy Button, a woman) and they are joined by Felix Livingstone, who is "on loan" from Bermuda - he is a Black West Indian character and that also adds interest (and a little diversity).
They are very much in the vein of the "cosy village mystery" - the most recent one centered around a sharper whose bones were found in the local garden-allotment, and at first Button's father, the local butcher, was suspected (and even jailed as a suspect). There was also a vegetable-marrow contest (who could grow the biggest one) and Mr. Button was in line to win.....and of course the deus-ex-machina at the end being his name was cleared, and the police drove him to the contest JUST IN TIME that he could accept his prize (which he had to be present to win).
And right there, that bit: that's why I like these. One of the hallmarks of cosy mysteries is that the perpetrator is figured out in the end (in this case, a somewhat unsavory person, but someone not without cause to hate the person he killed) and the innocent man is cleared, AND the day is saved, and he gets his moment in the sun. And there is a sense of order restored, though I strongly feel that in real life, a murder happening in a small town or a cohort of people who knew each other, that that would tend to drive any kind of community into bits and ruin the peace. But I can suspend disbelief enough for that.
I also discovered one of the oddball channels I get - which seems to mostly show "family friendly romance" (!!!!) movies, which....like I guess Hallmark is too racy some times?....sometimes shows reruns of Murder, She Wrote (A show I love greatly) and the old Columbos.
I never watched Columbo in its original run; I was too young for the 1970s ones (and would have chosen different tv, and my parents didn't watch it) and when the last few aired I didn't really have any interest (and the last few Columbos, the ones made in the late 80s/early 90s, they feel wrong somehow; Columbo is very much a figure of the 1970s to me). But the old ones are doubly interesting.
Yes, they're different: they're more gritty than cosy, or, well, gritty-sanitized-for-70s-network-tv (in one I saw last night, a nurse was murdered, and one of the cops says "well, it doesn't look like she was molested or anything" and these days they'd come right out and say 'raped"). Of course the attraction for these is Columbo himself (trivia fact: apparently his given name is Frank, or so it's claimed there's a shot of his license in an episode where you can read that. And I almost typed "Francis, " I could imagine an Italian-American detective being given Francis as a first name, after the saint)
And really, the main attractions for me are
a. Watching Columbo do his disheveled, "do you mind if I smoke in here" "just one more thing" "oh, miss, I wonder if you could explain" bits, because Falk just inhabited that character and I can't imagine any other actor doing it (hard no on a Columbo reboot, unless it was done as an animated series with a VA who could mimic Falk's vocal style well enough) and
b. the whole 1970s ethos. I was a child then, but I remember the cars and how wallpaper was bigger and uglier than it is now, and that short skirts were largely de rigeur and that people drank and smoked a whole lot more than they do now. I wouldn't want to go back to that time (especially because of the smoking), but it's interesting to see.
The stories are even secondary to that and I might not even remember much of the plotlines (though I do remember the guest stars - the one I referenced had "Grandpa" from The Waltons and also Leonard Nimoy in it)
And again there is a sense of order being restored in the end, though in a different way from the cosy mysteries (where the expectation is 'things will go back to how they were before and the survivors will be happy and not traumatized by having had a murderer in their midst at all') but in a sense of Columbo kind of sighing over the wickedness of people and feeling some satisfaction of having done his job, and you know he plans to go home to the Mrs. and have a good dinner that evening and that his dog will be there....Probably a more realistic outcome, the professional who catches criminals kind of shaking his head over sinful man but that he, an arguably virtuous man, gets to go home and at least enjoy time with his spouse and a pleasant meal and maybe - I don't know if it was ever said if Columbo cared for sports, but maybe watch a baseball game on tv or something. The whole recognition that life is flawed and the world is probably mostly terrible but you can also take some comfort in things that are good....
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