Tag Archives: Mystery

October 27, 2011 · 5:26 pm

The Sunday Philosophy Club: Meh.

                              So my office has a shelf of donated books that we exchange with one another, and last week I found myself – unusually and unexpectedly – without a book in my bag, so I picked up Alexander McCall Smith’s The Sunday Philosophy Club, having heard good things about The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency and being keen to work on my “spies and detectives” category. Let this be a lesson in choosing books: do not choose out of expediency and do not choose out of the vague remembrance that someone once said the author was “okay.” Let it also be a lesson to always have an emergency-back-up-just-in-case-the-bus-breaks-down-or-your-meeting-is-cancelled book.

The Sunday Philosophy Club suffers from boring characters and so an unengaging – and it’s a mystery! – plot. I struggled to care whether Isobel was murdered in the night, was profoundly indifferent to whether the murder was solved because I didn’t get to know the victim and didn’t believe Isobel was all that interested in being a detective in the first place, and was annoyed by Isobel’s niece, Cat, in no small part because she’s named Cat, but more precisely because she “pops round for tea”: I distrust characters who show up without invitation.

It’s true I didn’t care about the mystery because Isobel is boring and her investigatory skills are suspect, but it’s also true that I didn’t care because Isobel doesn’t seem to care. Every chapter she vacillates between absolute commitment (a moral imperative, she thinks) to investigate the crime and a willingness to drop it altogether because it makes people uncomfortable. What made me uncomfortable was her apparent willingness to do all this investigating as if she had license to do so. Rogue detective!

Other point of annoyance:the so-called “philosophical” basis of the novel are Isobel’s occasional musings on the ethics of particular situations. She considers the ethical principles of lying and seems surprised when she receives articles for her journal about lying: is this a coincidence she wonders? Well of course it isn’t. McCall Smith must think we’re thematic dopes for this, and other, heavy handed displays of the moral and thematic questions. Hint for the the thematically uninitiated: the book is about deception!

Finally, I don’t like that the red herring woman is named Minty. I don’t know why. I just don’t.

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October 13, 2011 · 8:58 pm

Still Life: Charming

      Set in a quaint Quebecois village, Louise Penny’s Still Life narrates the murder and murder investigation of the beloved town resident, Jane Neal. Of the books I’ve read so far in “Spies and Detectives,” Still Life most closely aligns with what I’ve always imagined as a classic “whodunnit”: the gradual introduction of a cast of characters and their possible motives, the inclusion of red herrings, and a measured and generous chief investigator.  To the mix Still Life adds the sub-plots of negotiating queer identity in a small town, young people struggling to find self-acceptance and self-worth, and the assurance offered by a good cup of tea. Okay, not really a good cup of tea, but rather, the tensions of French-English loyalties in (rural) Quebec.

I enjoyed the book a great deal for its mystery – trying to work out the killer, putting the book down so I could puzzle out new clues and then reading oh-so-rapidly so that I might find out who really did it, the surprise and delight of an ending I hadn’t expected, but still believed – but I also enjoyed it for its unabashed Canadian setting. The chief inspector drinks Tim Hortons coffee, the townspeople debate Quebecois language laws, the second in command argues against the displacement of indigenous people from the Montreal area, even Margaret Atwood has a (dubious) cameo! I like these things not simply because I’m a Canadianphile, but because they contributed to a convincing setting both in time and place, that allowed the crime, the townspeople, and the investigators to read not as characters easily cut-out of yet another mystery novel, but as products and contributors of a singular set of circumstances. No surprise then that Penny’s novels – Still Life is the first in what is now the “Inspector Gamache” series – are as wildly popular as any Canadian mystery series can be said to be wildly popular. If it’s any confirmation of worth, I’m planning to read another in the series come January.

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October 6, 2011 · 9:56 pm

Knots and Crosses: Smoking Kills

         So I’m reading a proper novel right now (stay tuned for the report), but in the interest of my pressing reading schedule, I downloaded the audio book of Ian Rankin’s Knots and Crosses to listen to while cooking, commuting, and doing chores. In discussion with N. last night I argued that listening to the audio book is *not* cheating in 10-10-12 both because I make the rules in this absurd contest and because and audio book isn’t abridged or fiddled with as a movie adaption might be, and it takes just as long (or longer, I think) to listen as it odes to read. So there.

Guilt assuaged, let me tell you what I gleaned from the book: Edinburgh is an exceptionally safe city for tourists, women are sexy tarts unless proven otherwise, and smoking may kill you, but you’ll enjoy your life more because of it.

I wasn’t much taken with Inspector Rebus, maybe because the only thing that humanizes him is his addiction to smoking. We know he’s divorced, but not why; we know he has challenges with his daughter, but not what those challenges might be. I accept this is the first book in a series, and so I’ll allow that his character development might take place over the course of the series, but as it is, I found myself largely indifferent when his daughter is kidnapped. I like to think I’m a better person than indifference at a 12 year old girl being kidnapped (though my reaction to The Lovely Bones suggests otherwise…), so I’ll hold the narrative responsible for discouraging my interest in either Samantha or Rebus.

As for the “mystery,” it’s not really much of a mystery. More that Rebus is a detective. The reader could not follow clues and guess who the killer is because the narrative doesn’t leave any clues, it just reveal all when Rebus is hypnotized. Yes, that handy plot device where the Inspector knew everything all along, he just had to be put under to remember – as in a dream! – what he already knew.

All this makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy Knots and Crosses, which isn’t strictly speaking true. In fact, I enjoyed it a great deal, and am perhaps struggling against admitting this by demonstrating the manifold ways the book fails. So why did I like it? For the same reasons I like Law & Order, I guess. I like watching the forces of law and order methodically, if ploddingly, go about the business of protecting the status quo. I like plot lines that are reassuringly simple, that promise without the shadow of a doubt that everyone (save the first four murdered girls…) will be just fine. That a neat resolution will be reached. And it was. Am I a shallow or weak reader for liking the book for these reasons? Maybe. But it’s a welcome dose of predictability when set against some of the other books I’ve read. Including the book I’m reading right now. More on that to come. Soon.

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September 13, 2011 · 11:21 pm

The Lost Highway: the half-way through switch (!)

       When I started reading David Adam Richards’ The Lost Highway I hated it. It was Crime and Punishment all over again, but set in the Maritimes and populated by poor Francaphones instead of poor Russians. Instead of murder for money, murder for a lottery ticket. The same obsessive hand wringing, the same excessive meditation on should-I, shouldn’t-I.

Until! Midway through the book Richards’ must have realized (or perhaps his editor) that a novel can only go so long without a plot event, and decided to introduce the detective, Markus Paul, and the narrative takes. off. I don’t mean just in plot events (in fact they remain sparse until the last twenty odd pages), but Markus’ observations about the outside world, about character behaviour and motivation counterbalance Adam’s obsessive internalization. Markus brings clarity to the moral question of the novel – how do we justify our action and the character question how do single decisions alter whole lives, whole sense of self – by taking action.

I almost gave up on this one, and I’m delighted that I didn’t. The suspense of the last fifty pages – both in terms of what happens and in terms of what kind of decision will Adam make (the right choice? what is the right choice?) is brilliant. You might argue with me that this suspense could not have been built without the preceding 400 pages of hand wringing, and I’d say you’re wrong. The hand-wringing is only terrible when it lacks the counterpoint of considered, measured action. The success of the psychological drama in this novel is its balance in minor, yet brilliant, action. My only regret is that the first third of the book lacks this balance, and is something painful to read as a result. Is the payoff worth it? It’s a mystery! (ha! get it? spies and detectives category? it’s a mystery? time to sign-off…)

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