Mini reviews #12

Death in a White Tie (1938) by Ngaio Marsh. Blackmail, debutantes, and dying social niceties abound in this golden-age mystery with more than a touch of the self-parodic. Although one of the least substantial Roderick Alleyn novels, I think it’s one of the best. Marsh is at her best when she’s writing like a wasp sampling sugar.

Knots and Crosses (1987) by Ian Rankin. The first Rebus novel, which was, apparently, never meant to spawn a series. The idea of a divorced alcoholic detective, unable to recreate his former glories while all the time the world around him needs fixing is old and hackneyed now, but it was probably fresh when Rankin wrote this. And, the way he writes, it still feels fresh.

Agatha Christie: The Grand Tour (2012), edited by Mathew Prichard. I’m conflicted about this beautiful book. It is, undeniably, a lovely thing to behold. The format is simple: a collection of Agatha Christie’s letters, written to her mother during her 1922 world tour with her first husband. As a Christie enthusiast, I love the insights into my favourite writer’s early professional life. As a human being, I feel a bit dodgy dipping into her personal – and definitely not professional – correspondence.

Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) by P.D. James. An almost unspeakably dull mystery sequel to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and, it turns out, James’s final book. I have very little good to say about this, except that the author’s love and affection for her source shines through on most pages.

Detecting Wimsey: Papers on Dorothy L. Sayers (2017) by Nancy-Lou Patterson. A collection of old (mostly 1970s/1980s) essays on Sayers and her detective, previously published in specialist journals and edited by Patterson’s students. While there is nothing ‘new’ in the scholarship, it provides a fascinating glimpse of how crime fiction studies used to be – and, by proxy, how far the field has come.

Mini Reviews #7

A Blunt Instrument (1938) by Georgette Heyer. Sorry -- I'm not convinced. After a few laugh out loud lines like 'His Lordship did not answer because he was dead', which I'm not convinced were supposed to be funny, I read this in a pretty bad mood. And for what it's worth, the solution is obvious literally from page 2. Heyer is being heralded as writing gentle social satires in her detective fiction, but I don't buy that. A Blunt Instrument exemplifies the conservatism and laziness that we like to think it critiques.

Dead Air (1986) by Mike Lupica. An investigative journalist takes to... investigating... when his ex-girlfriend is murdered. The case leads him into the glamorous and impossibly bitchy worlds of American television and evangelical Christianity. This is an amusing read. I first read it at the age of eleven and saw the twist coming a mile off.

Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) by Walter Mosley. The first case for hardboiled African American war veteran Easy Rawlins. Set in Los Angeles in 1948, this novel takes all the tropes and conventions that Hammett and Chandler coined and exposes their limits, developing Rawlins as a distinct voice in search of an identity. A compelling and brilliant read.

The Snowman (2007) by Jo Nesbo. The seventh case for Norwegian sleuth Harry Hole. Someone is building snowmen, sinisterly unexplained and facing towards houses from which people disappear. And soon bodies -- or, rather, bits of bodies -- turn up. This is a fast-paced and atmospheric novel that takes us all over Oslo and gets us fully invested in the unfortunately-named hero.

Sleep No More (2017) by PD James. A beautiful new collection of 6 short stories by the late crime queen. It's easy to scoff at the publishers for bringing these out 6 at a time, instead of in one go, and always in time for Christmas. But the books are so pretty one can almost forgive them. James was not a great short story writer, and if you read anthologies, you have probably come across some or all of these before. Of note is 'The Murder of Santa Claus', narrated by a hack crime writer who explains that he is 'no H.R.F. Keating, no Dick Francis, not even a P.D. James.' Poor thing. That story is a bit of a satire on golden age crime as James perceived it, as divorced from the horrors and ethical overhauls of international war. I've never agreed with James's hot takes, but she expressed them in a relatively entertaining manner.