catsmate
No longer the 1
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Wrt shopping carts, I'm with Pratchett. Hunt them down and exterminate them.
What book is everyone reading at the moment? Part 2.
- Thread starter alex04
- Start date
AmyStrange
Philosopher
Don't be sorry. It was a great suggestion, and I might even try listening to it later.
Anyway, thanks again.
-
alfaniner
Penultimate Amazing
Picked up The Cobra Event at a Little Free Library, by the guy who did The Hot Zone. I liked that one but did not like the writing style, thinking it was presented like a fifth-grader's book report. I'm hoping this one is better.
I also looked at a John Grisham one, but thought he was the author of the last book whose style I really hated, the "coffee" guy. (Turns out it was Tom Clancy -- coffee being mentioned on every other page.) So I flipped through the book, landed on a random page, and the first word that popped out at me was "coffee". Put it right back.
I also looked at a John Grisham one, but thought he was the author of the last book whose style I really hated, the "coffee" guy. (Turns out it was Tom Clancy -- coffee being mentioned on every other page.) So I flipped through the book, landed on a random page, and the first word that popped out at me was "coffee". Put it right back.
Spektator
Is that right?
Peter and Wendy, J.M. Barrie
The classic children’s book about the boy who never grew up and his friend who is a girl/surrogate mother, this takes on more freight than its original author probably intended or his original audience suspected.
Before the novel, Peter Pan evolved in informal play narratives Barrie developed with the five sons of Llewellyn and Sylvia Davies. Their imaginary activities included scenarios of fights with pirates and Red Indians, and the leading figure was the boy adventurer Peter Pan. Later, Peter existed in stories collected in The Little White Bird (1902), the chapters about him revised and published separately as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), in which he seems to be part boy (or fairy) and part bird. He collects boys who become lost as babies ad do not want to grow up, takes care of them, and when they do begin to grow up, he kills them. However, when Barrie constructed a stage play the character took on his final nature.
And with further authorial fiddling, the play became the novel Peter and Wendy (1911). Barrie half-seriously complained that the plot was spoiled when he was forced to “let the ladies in.” These included Mrs. Darling, her daughter Wendy, and in Never-Never Land the native princess Tiger Lily. Barrie seems to mean that their presence forced him to make the play and the later novel less bloodthirsty and more sentimental.
Still, the body count stays high. In addition to Peter, the boy adventurer, Barrie created Captain James Hook, who shares with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver the honor of establishing many of the standard pirate tropes. There’s ironic humor aplenty, and the background is thoroughly British public-school. Hook, an alumnus of, probably Eton, is thoroughly evil and yet conducts himself with conscientious good form. Still, he suspects that his bo’s’n Smee has such good form that he does not even have to think about it, which may even make Smee eligible for the Pops. I had to look that up. It was an Etonian club of no more than sixteen boys at a time, noteworthy for their gentlemanly conduct.
The novel's plot, of course, sees Peter coming to the Darling house in London to find his missing shadow, accompanied by the fairy Tinker Bell. Wendy, the prepubescent (but just) daughter of the family sews his shadow back on, and then Peter takes her and her younger brothers John and Michael on a holiday to Neverland, where they meet the Lot Boys and have adventures, culminating in their killing almost all of the crew of Hook's piratate ship, the Jolly Roger, commandeering the ship, and sailing to London. Aterward, once a year, Peter returns to take Wendy to Neverland for spring cleaning, until he forgets, and then when Wendy is thirty and a mother, he takes her daughter, and still later her granddaughter. They seem interchangeable to Peter since he himself never ages.
The book chimes weirdly nowadays. As I wrote this, AI fretted that “Red Indian” is a racist term, but let’s face it, that’s the one Barrie uses. The Lost Boys cheerfully talk about the methods they have used to kill enemies and even try to murder Wendy when she first appears. Then again, not growing up seems a very mixed blessing, leaving Peter with nothing permanently to rely on and no possible character development. The girls Peter serially takes on adventures face the disappointment of his ultimately forgetting about and abandoning them. And children are still, as Barrie remarks, gay, and innocent, and heartless.
The classic children’s book about the boy who never grew up and his friend who is a girl/surrogate mother, this takes on more freight than its original author probably intended or his original audience suspected.
Before the novel, Peter Pan evolved in informal play narratives Barrie developed with the five sons of Llewellyn and Sylvia Davies. Their imaginary activities included scenarios of fights with pirates and Red Indians, and the leading figure was the boy adventurer Peter Pan. Later, Peter existed in stories collected in The Little White Bird (1902), the chapters about him revised and published separately as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), in which he seems to be part boy (or fairy) and part bird. He collects boys who become lost as babies ad do not want to grow up, takes care of them, and when they do begin to grow up, he kills them. However, when Barrie constructed a stage play the character took on his final nature.
And with further authorial fiddling, the play became the novel Peter and Wendy (1911). Barrie half-seriously complained that the plot was spoiled when he was forced to “let the ladies in.” These included Mrs. Darling, her daughter Wendy, and in Never-Never Land the native princess Tiger Lily. Barrie seems to mean that their presence forced him to make the play and the later novel less bloodthirsty and more sentimental.
Still, the body count stays high. In addition to Peter, the boy adventurer, Barrie created Captain James Hook, who shares with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver the honor of establishing many of the standard pirate tropes. There’s ironic humor aplenty, and the background is thoroughly British public-school. Hook, an alumnus of, probably Eton, is thoroughly evil and yet conducts himself with conscientious good form. Still, he suspects that his bo’s’n Smee has such good form that he does not even have to think about it, which may even make Smee eligible for the Pops. I had to look that up. It was an Etonian club of no more than sixteen boys at a time, noteworthy for their gentlemanly conduct.
The novel's plot, of course, sees Peter coming to the Darling house in London to find his missing shadow, accompanied by the fairy Tinker Bell. Wendy, the prepubescent (but just) daughter of the family sews his shadow back on, and then Peter takes her and her younger brothers John and Michael on a holiday to Neverland, where they meet the Lot Boys and have adventures, culminating in their killing almost all of the crew of Hook's piratate ship, the Jolly Roger, commandeering the ship, and sailing to London. Aterward, once a year, Peter returns to take Wendy to Neverland for spring cleaning, until he forgets, and then when Wendy is thirty and a mother, he takes her daughter, and still later her granddaughter. They seem interchangeable to Peter since he himself never ages.
The book chimes weirdly nowadays. As I wrote this, AI fretted that “Red Indian” is a racist term, but let’s face it, that’s the one Barrie uses. The Lost Boys cheerfully talk about the methods they have used to kill enemies and even try to murder Wendy when she first appears. Then again, not growing up seems a very mixed blessing, leaving Peter with nothing permanently to rely on and no possible character development. The girls Peter serially takes on adventures face the disappointment of his ultimately forgetting about and abandoning them. And children are still, as Barrie remarks, gay, and innocent, and heartless.
SteveAitch
Master Poster
Just finished Spectacles: a Memoir by Sue Perkins.
Fairly well written and pretty amusing. All in all, not a bad light read.
Especially as it it was marked down from £7.99, in several steps, to £1.24 - our local WHSmith closes in 13 days time, everything must go!
Fairly well written and pretty amusing. All in all, not a bad light read.
Especially as it it was marked down from £7.99, in several steps, to £1.24 - our local WHSmith closes in 13 days time, everything must go!
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xterra
So far, so good...
I have an acquaintance who has just (at the age of 33) become interested in reading, rather than watching movies or videos. His particular interest is horror novels, a genre with which I am totally unfamiliar. He said he recently read F. Paul Wilson's The Keep, and enjoyed it.
Please recommend your favorite novel and/or author in this genre, so I can give him a list.
Thanks.
Please recommend your favorite novel and/or author in this genre, so I can give him a list.
Thanks.
E)verybody Always Tells, the 27th book in the Bobby Owen series, was written in 1950 so no longer really part of the Golden Age of detective fiction. I think the author struggled to place his plots in the rapidly changing post-war world, but this one isn't really oriented to any particular time period other than the odd mention of the housing shortage. However, the plotting and characterisation is very well done, similar to the earlier books
The plot hinges around an inventor, murdered while Bobby is actually in the house. All the suspects blame each other and some seem determined to interfere with the investigation but Bobby gets there in the end. The author's personal opposition to the death penalty (abolished in the UK in 1965) again influences the outcome, with the criminal escaping the hangman.
The plot hinges around an inventor, murdered while Bobby is actually in the house. All the suspects blame each other and some seem determined to interfere with the investigation but Bobby gets there in the end. The author's personal opposition to the death penalty (abolished in the UK in 1965) again influences the outcome, with the criminal escaping the hangman.
alfaniner
Penultimate Amazing
Yes, I'm about halfway through and unfortunately it's about like I expected. Written mostly in passive voice. ("There were books on the table", instead of something descriptive like "Books littered the table." or simplistic scenes like "She walked to the door. She went inside. She sat down. She opened her notebook.") And he has a quirk I noticed with another author that grated on me as well. Any character introduced, no matter how minor, gets a paragraph with name, age, height, weight, clothes, hair, and accoutrements. Every single one. Most of those descriptions don't even matter but the narrative (such as it is) just stops dead. It's like reading a MadLibs.
The progression of the story (virus outbreak) is OK, but he takes great delight in the most graphic details of sickness and autopsies and such, with colors and sound effects and such. Four times in one exam he brought up the smell of feces. (Not comments by the characters, btw.) It's graphic and disgusting. Up until this point I'd considered American Psycho to be the worst one I'd read for that, but that was done in such a manner as to appear... skillful and talented.
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catsmate
No longer the 1
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Richard Laymon.
Spektator
Is that right?
Penelope’s Last Song, Claire North
Having read Stephen Fry’s version of Homer’s Odyssey, I picked up this (actually the third volume in a Penelope trilogy, but essentially the conclusion of the Odyssey). Claire North is the pseudonym of Catherine Webb.
North’s perspective, as the title suggests, is centered on Penelope, the not-so-patient wife of Odysseus. Broadly speaking, the narrative follows Homer’s plot from the homecoming of Odysseus through to the epic’s climax, but with marked differences.
For one thing, the novel’s narrator is Athena, who works behind the scenes to make real life adhere to the epic that will be written. She’s a goddess and knows past, present, and future, so the point of view is truly omniscient. That poses a bit of a problem, because it distances the reader to an extent and also raises the question of what good is being a god or goddess anyway, if que sera, sera?
The familiar characters are here: Odysseus, weary of war and travel and not quite as sharp as his reputation suggests, Telemachus, his and Penelope’s son, still a callow youth of twenty, Penelope, who is smart and assertive and who has governed Ithaca and the Western Islands on her own these past twenty years, along with the Suitors, Eumaus the swineherd, and assorted other gods, goddesses, and secondary figures, not to forget Odysseus’ aged dog Argos, whose function is to recognize his master and immediately die of doggy joy.
However, the attempted climactic revenge of the slain Suitors’ families, which amounts to only a bit of the Odyssey’s final chapter, occupies way too much of the novel. The battle scenes are written as though they occur in cinematic slow motion. In the novel's drawn-out climax, Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus (with a small army consisting of both men and women) are besieged holed up in the farmhouse of old Laertes, former king and father of Odysseus. By the way, Laertes is a grumpy old guy, though still feisty. When it looks as if they’re all going to die, there’s—I won’t call it a deus ex machina ending, but leave it at that.
The feminist perspective is interesting. Penelope has an unusually close tie to the palace maids, and she doesn’t trust her feelings for Odysseus any longer, while he is inexperienced with expressing the emotions he feels for her. There’s also a flirtation between Penelope and a dashing prince of Egypt. All in all, Athena’s meddling is not the bold lightning-stroke of the epic, but more in the line of persuasion. Though the narrative stance put me off a bit, I did enjoy the different take.
Having read Stephen Fry’s version of Homer’s Odyssey, I picked up this (actually the third volume in a Penelope trilogy, but essentially the conclusion of the Odyssey). Claire North is the pseudonym of Catherine Webb.
North’s perspective, as the title suggests, is centered on Penelope, the not-so-patient wife of Odysseus. Broadly speaking, the narrative follows Homer’s plot from the homecoming of Odysseus through to the epic’s climax, but with marked differences.
For one thing, the novel’s narrator is Athena, who works behind the scenes to make real life adhere to the epic that will be written. She’s a goddess and knows past, present, and future, so the point of view is truly omniscient. That poses a bit of a problem, because it distances the reader to an extent and also raises the question of what good is being a god or goddess anyway, if que sera, sera?
The familiar characters are here: Odysseus, weary of war and travel and not quite as sharp as his reputation suggests, Telemachus, his and Penelope’s son, still a callow youth of twenty, Penelope, who is smart and assertive and who has governed Ithaca and the Western Islands on her own these past twenty years, along with the Suitors, Eumaus the swineherd, and assorted other gods, goddesses, and secondary figures, not to forget Odysseus’ aged dog Argos, whose function is to recognize his master and immediately die of doggy joy.
However, the attempted climactic revenge of the slain Suitors’ families, which amounts to only a bit of the Odyssey’s final chapter, occupies way too much of the novel. The battle scenes are written as though they occur in cinematic slow motion. In the novel's drawn-out climax, Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus (with a small army consisting of both men and women) are besieged holed up in the farmhouse of old Laertes, former king and father of Odysseus. By the way, Laertes is a grumpy old guy, though still feisty. When it looks as if they’re all going to die, there’s—I won’t call it a deus ex machina ending, but leave it at that.
The feminist perspective is interesting. Penelope has an unusually close tie to the palace maids, and she doesn’t trust her feelings for Odysseus any longer, while he is inexperienced with expressing the emotions he feels for her. There’s also a flirtation between Penelope and a dashing prince of Egypt. All in all, Athena’s meddling is not the bold lightning-stroke of the epic, but more in the line of persuasion. Though the narrative stance put me off a bit, I did enjoy the different take.
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
I tend to think short story collections are a good way to start with a new author or genre.
Genre: Best Horror of the Year, edited by Ellen Datlow. Any year is fine. Datlow is one of the best Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror anthologists out there.
Authors with good short story collections:
- Stephen King
- Joe Hill
- John Langan
- Laird Barron
- Thomas Ligotti
- Salem's Lot, by Stephen King
- Come Closer, by Sara Gran
- The Lesser Dead, by Christopher Buehlman
- The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins
- Ship of Fools, by Richard Paul Russo (not to be confused with other books of the same name)
Spektator
Is that right?
It's a true crime book but "The Complete Jack the Ripper" by Donald Rumbelow really crept me out.
Spektator
Is that right?
(This review may contain spoilers. No tree nuts, though)
Carmilla, Sheridan le Fanu
Published twenty-five years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the novella that used many literary tropes of vampire fiction was Carmilla, by the Irish writer Sheridan le Fanu (the name was originally O’le Fanu before they changed it).https://internationalskeptics.com/forums/#_edn1
The story centers on a retired British officer and his beautiful buxom blonde, blue-eyed eighteen-year-old daughter, who reside as did so many of their nationality and class, in a mouldy, crumbling, spider-webby schloss in Styria[ii], where the little family lives quite happily apart from the fact that neither of them has anyone to talk to within a radius of twenty miles.[iii]
The daughter, Laura, is lonely. Her best friend is the distant Bertha Spielsdorf, whose uncle General Spielsdorf is a former war comrade of Laura’s father. They are super friendly families and see each other for a couple of days once a year. Then one year, the year Laura turns eighteen, Spielsdorf sends a note to the effect that his niece has just died of a wasting illness that left her drained, so their visit will not take place. Immediately thereafter, a noblewoman’s carriage has a flat horse right spang in front of the front door of the schloss,[iv] and from the overturned carriage issues a noblewoman whose name nobody bothers to ask. She inquires whether the British officer, who must look a soft touch, will look after her own beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter for a little while, as she herself must be off on a journey of life or death. The military simp agrees, and Carmilla moves into the schloss for three months.
Laura, the narrator of all the story that is not told as a story-within-a -story, describes a lovely time, each hour seeing the two nubile young girls snuggle, stroke each other, exchange languorous kisses, and lord knows what all. As the days pass, in the countryside all around the schloss young women start dropping dead like flies in a Raid commercial, completely drained of blood. Laura herself begins to languish.
Eventually she and Carmilla recall a dream they both had at the age of twelve of each other, embracing and weltering in blood. And their bond grows ever deeper. Before a crisis arrives, alarmed at his daughter’s strange wasting sickness, Laura’s father leaves Carmilla sleeping in her bed (she never gets up until sunsest) and takes his daughter off to visit General Spielsdorf, where they see a painting of a gal who shore-nuff resembles Carmilla (it is a portrait of a vampire) and they learn that the whole area has been plagued for many decades by Identical-looking vampires variously named Mircalla, Marcilla, McRalli, and so on.[v]
One man declares Carmilla is a vampire and tries to behead her, but misses. Then another fellow appears, who is the lineal descendant of a vampire hunter who pursued the original Carmilla long long ago, and there is a climax.
Laura escapes with her life, but she languishes, because bloodsucker or not, Carmilla was her lover, and she misses the girl’s mouth.
This may strike one as giving away too many secrets. Really, for its time Carmilla was something fresh and new. Ironically, many of its elements now seem dated. For this reader, though, the big problem is characterization. The characters are so slow on the uptake and the action of “I love you the most,” “No, I love YOU the most” becomes monotonous. I have nothing against lesbian vampires, but at the least they should not be boring.
https://internationalskeptics.com/forums/#_ednref1 This is not true. But if it were, Le Fanu would have changed it because he was would have been shy about being hailed in the street: “O’le Fanu!” would have had Irishmen looking around for charging toros.
[ii] That’s an area in central Austria, characterized by a variety of breathtaking vistas and flocks of bloodsucking vampires.
[iii] The whole story comes from the memoirs of Dr. Hesselius, the first occult detective in British fiction. He doesn’t tell us the last names of Laura and her father. I like to imagine the surname is Mussey, and that the father is Brigadier General Noah Mussey and his daughter is Laura Mussey. Don’t quote me on that.
[iv] The same accident happens all the time in vampire fiction. Horse with a busted leg, carriage with a wheel off, car with a flat, whatever, It’s one of the tropiest tropes. Transylvania probably has road signs reading MOVE DAMAGED VEHICLE TO CASTLE DOOR. AH-HA-HA!
[v] Anagram names are another tropey trope trope. See “Your teeth sure look healthy Mr. Alucard!” A Harry Potter version might be Miss Lucy Brokodious.
Carmilla, Sheridan le Fanu
Published twenty-five years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the novella that used many literary tropes of vampire fiction was Carmilla, by the Irish writer Sheridan le Fanu (the name was originally O’le Fanu before they changed it).https://internationalskeptics.com/forums/#_edn1
The story centers on a retired British officer and his beautiful buxom blonde, blue-eyed eighteen-year-old daughter, who reside as did so many of their nationality and class, in a mouldy, crumbling, spider-webby schloss in Styria[ii], where the little family lives quite happily apart from the fact that neither of them has anyone to talk to within a radius of twenty miles.[iii]
The daughter, Laura, is lonely. Her best friend is the distant Bertha Spielsdorf, whose uncle General Spielsdorf is a former war comrade of Laura’s father. They are super friendly families and see each other for a couple of days once a year. Then one year, the year Laura turns eighteen, Spielsdorf sends a note to the effect that his niece has just died of a wasting illness that left her drained, so their visit will not take place. Immediately thereafter, a noblewoman’s carriage has a flat horse right spang in front of the front door of the schloss,[iv] and from the overturned carriage issues a noblewoman whose name nobody bothers to ask. She inquires whether the British officer, who must look a soft touch, will look after her own beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter for a little while, as she herself must be off on a journey of life or death. The military simp agrees, and Carmilla moves into the schloss for three months.
Laura, the narrator of all the story that is not told as a story-within-a -story, describes a lovely time, each hour seeing the two nubile young girls snuggle, stroke each other, exchange languorous kisses, and lord knows what all. As the days pass, in the countryside all around the schloss young women start dropping dead like flies in a Raid commercial, completely drained of blood. Laura herself begins to languish.
Eventually she and Carmilla recall a dream they both had at the age of twelve of each other, embracing and weltering in blood. And their bond grows ever deeper. Before a crisis arrives, alarmed at his daughter’s strange wasting sickness, Laura’s father leaves Carmilla sleeping in her bed (she never gets up until sunsest) and takes his daughter off to visit General Spielsdorf, where they see a painting of a gal who shore-nuff resembles Carmilla (it is a portrait of a vampire) and they learn that the whole area has been plagued for many decades by Identical-looking vampires variously named Mircalla, Marcilla, McRalli, and so on.[v]
One man declares Carmilla is a vampire and tries to behead her, but misses. Then another fellow appears, who is the lineal descendant of a vampire hunter who pursued the original Carmilla long long ago, and there is a climax.
Laura escapes with her life, but she languishes, because bloodsucker or not, Carmilla was her lover, and she misses the girl’s mouth.
This may strike one as giving away too many secrets. Really, for its time Carmilla was something fresh and new. Ironically, many of its elements now seem dated. For this reader, though, the big problem is characterization. The characters are so slow on the uptake and the action of “I love you the most,” “No, I love YOU the most” becomes monotonous. I have nothing against lesbian vampires, but at the least they should not be boring.
https://internationalskeptics.com/forums/#_ednref1 This is not true. But if it were, Le Fanu would have changed it because he was would have been shy about being hailed in the street: “O’le Fanu!” would have had Irishmen looking around for charging toros.
[ii] That’s an area in central Austria, characterized by a variety of breathtaking vistas and flocks of bloodsucking vampires.
[iii] The whole story comes from the memoirs of Dr. Hesselius, the first occult detective in British fiction. He doesn’t tell us the last names of Laura and her father. I like to imagine the surname is Mussey, and that the father is Brigadier General Noah Mussey and his daughter is Laura Mussey. Don’t quote me on that.
[iv] The same accident happens all the time in vampire fiction. Horse with a busted leg, carriage with a wheel off, car with a flat, whatever, It’s one of the tropiest tropes. Transylvania probably has road signs reading MOVE DAMAGED VEHICLE TO CASTLE DOOR. AH-HA-HA!
[v] Anagram names are another tropey trope trope. See “Your teeth sure look healthy Mr. Alucard!” A Harry Potter version might be Miss Lucy Brokodious.
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Scorpion
Illuminator
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2013
- Messages
- 3,812
I am currently reading the book 'walking with dinosaurs'. It is the book that accompanies the BBC series. I also have the DVD boxed set.
The series is fascinating and brings the stories of dinosaurs to life. It is awesome to think of what was happening on this earth over 65 million years ago.
The series is fascinating and brings the stories of dinosaurs to life. It is awesome to think of what was happening on this earth over 65 million years ago.
Spektator
Is that right?
A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle
The first Sherlock Holmes story, this tale was commissioned for the same Christmas annual that also selected The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Doyle and Wilde made an odd pairing, but both stories opened possibilities for their authors.
The plot of Study, narrated by Dr. John H. Watson, begins with the short account of his experiences in the Afghan wars, culminating when he was wounded at the Battle of Maiwand. Discharged from the army, mending from his wound and illness, Watson needs a housemate and finds one in the eccentric student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Sherlock Holmes. The two young men rent a net apartment at 221-B Baker Street, and history is made.
The mystery involves a corpse discovered in a vacant house, a middle-aged man who turns out to be Enoch Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio (identified by business cards found on the body). Scotland Yard detectives Lestrade and Gregson are stymied, and Holmes lends a brain. His observations and deductions quickly uncover secrets the official detectives completely miss. Just when the murderer—the double murderer by then, he having killed Drebber's partner in crime Stangerson—has been clapped in manacles, we become privy to a story even Holmes does not hear in detail.
We flash back twenty years and find ourselves in the Utah desert, where a wagon-train guide and a toddler girl are the last survivors of a calamitous trek. On the verge of death, they are rescued by the Mormons on their way to set up their own religious community in the wilds of the west. A melodramatic tale within the tale unfolds, in which the guide is forced to join the Church of Latter-Day Saints, the girl grows up and is coveted by two sanctimonious but irreligious Mormons, who turn out to be a younger Drebber and Stangerson. When they force her into marriage and kill her adoptive father, her secret beau swears revenge. Surprise, he becomes the nemesis and eventual slayer of Drebber and Stangerson.
Watson takes up again and wraps up the story. It's amusing—there's a sly wit at work—and works as a detective story in a landmark sort of way, setting the pattern for decades to come. The old story holds up and is a fast and entertaining read.
The first Sherlock Holmes story, this tale was commissioned for the same Christmas annual that also selected The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Doyle and Wilde made an odd pairing, but both stories opened possibilities for their authors.
The plot of Study, narrated by Dr. John H. Watson, begins with the short account of his experiences in the Afghan wars, culminating when he was wounded at the Battle of Maiwand. Discharged from the army, mending from his wound and illness, Watson needs a housemate and finds one in the eccentric student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Sherlock Holmes. The two young men rent a net apartment at 221-B Baker Street, and history is made.
The mystery involves a corpse discovered in a vacant house, a middle-aged man who turns out to be Enoch Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio (identified by business cards found on the body). Scotland Yard detectives Lestrade and Gregson are stymied, and Holmes lends a brain. His observations and deductions quickly uncover secrets the official detectives completely miss. Just when the murderer—the double murderer by then, he having killed Drebber's partner in crime Stangerson—has been clapped in manacles, we become privy to a story even Holmes does not hear in detail.
We flash back twenty years and find ourselves in the Utah desert, where a wagon-train guide and a toddler girl are the last survivors of a calamitous trek. On the verge of death, they are rescued by the Mormons on their way to set up their own religious community in the wilds of the west. A melodramatic tale within the tale unfolds, in which the guide is forced to join the Church of Latter-Day Saints, the girl grows up and is coveted by two sanctimonious but irreligious Mormons, who turn out to be a younger Drebber and Stangerson. When they force her into marriage and kill her adoptive father, her secret beau swears revenge. Surprise, he becomes the nemesis and eventual slayer of Drebber and Stangerson.
Watson takes up again and wraps up the story. It's amusing—there's a sly wit at work—and works as a detective story in a landmark sort of way, setting the pattern for decades to come. The old story holds up and is a fast and entertaining read.
Spektator
Is that right?
"The two young men rent a net apartment at 221-B Baker Street, and history is made."
Read "a neat apartment." Edit isn't working for me.
Read "a neat apartment." Edit isn't working for me.
The Golden Dagger, book 28 in the Bobby Owen series. A mysterious phone call is received at Scotland Yard, claiming that a murder has been committed in a country house. The call is traced to a public phone box, in which is found the bloodstained Cellini dagger of the title. At first inclined to brush this off as a hoax, Bobby heads off to investigate and discovers that the dagger is an heirloom, usually on display at the country house. There's no body or trace of a murder, but there is an intriguing cast of characters, including the aristocratic owner of the dagger, his soi-disant actress daughter and several of her suitors, his overbearing sister and her henpecked husband, a missing play-reader, a missing author, the author's secretary who is rarely found without a hatchet in her hand, and a mysterious housemaid.
Eventually a body is found hidden in the woods, and a complicated plot which partly turns on a faked painting and a missing hat ends on a gothic horror note as several people, including the murderer, become lost in a blanketing fog and two are attacked.
There are a few nods to the time period - 1951- and once again, the murderer escapes the gallows but doesn't escape justice.
On to the next book The Secret Search. I haven't finished this yet but was fascinated by one of the ways Bobby considers to find a missing girl who arrives in England from Canada and promptly vanishes without trace - as meat rationing is still in force, he suggests consulting with butchers in the area where she might be, to determine if any of the regular customers have a guest with no ration card!
Eventually a body is found hidden in the woods, and a complicated plot which partly turns on a faked painting and a missing hat ends on a gothic horror note as several people, including the murderer, become lost in a blanketing fog and two are attacked.
There are a few nods to the time period - 1951- and once again, the murderer escapes the gallows but doesn't escape justice.
On to the next book The Secret Search. I haven't finished this yet but was fascinated by one of the ways Bobby considers to find a missing girl who arrives in England from Canada and promptly vanishes without trace - as meat rationing is still in force, he suggests consulting with butchers in the area where she might be, to determine if any of the regular customers have a guest with no ration card!
SteveAitch
Master Poster
Until Holmes fills it with his chemisty equipment and loads of dusty papers. Oh, and shoots holes in the wall - in the form of 'VR'.
But that may be in later stories...
I am halfway through Sissel-Jo Gazan's detective novel The Dinosaur Feather (GoodReads). It's a Danish novel by a Danish author, but I'm reading it in English because I couldn't get the Danish version on Kindle.
The evolution of birds takes up a large part of the book, so it's the perfect gift for that creationist friend of yours who really needs to understand the other side of the 'controversy'. You can always use the excuse that you thought it was just a thriller, something like Jurassic Park.
The evolution of birds takes up a large part of the book, so it's the perfect gift for that creationist friend of yours who really needs to understand the other side of the 'controversy'. You can always use the excuse that you thought it was just a thriller, something like Jurassic Park.
catsmate
No longer the 1
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 34,767
I'm taking a break from Bobby, reading the Thane & Moss series ATM.