Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 13th, 2015 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Vintage Murder, one of Ngaio Marsh’s New Zealand-set murder mysteries. I realize she could probably only come up with so many excuses to send her Scotland Yard detective around the world to investigate murders in New Zealand, but I really think it’s too bad she didn’t set more of her mysteries in New Zealand, because they have a certain pop! that her English mysteries don’t have.
I think it’s partly lack of competition. English Golden Age mysteries are thick on the ground, but I can’t think of anyone else who wrote New Zealand Golden Age mysteries. (Admittedly, I haven’t made an exhaustive search. Or really much of a search at all. Maybe New Zealand has a secret groundswell of mystery novels of which I know nothing.)
Continuing the mystery theme, I also read the new Veronica Mars book, Mr. Kiss-and-Tell, which is about 1) investigating a rape, and 2) trying to vote the sleezy corrupt sheriff out of office. I am always a little leery of mystery novels that center around a rape, because there are so many ways that can go wrong; but I thought this one did all right. The damage is clearly fairly brutal, but none of the rapes are graphically described.
And the fight against corruption, as one would expect from Veronica Mars, is pretty excellent, although I wasn't sure about Weevil's decision to chicken out of the lawsuit at a crucial moment. I get that he has a wife and a daughter to look after, but come on, man, kicking out police officers who do stuff like plant evidence and take bribes is protecting your wife and kid! In a long-term way. And would Weevil really let down all the other people who are depending on him like that?
I think I might have liked it better if the sheriff had threatened him, instead of Weevil just rolling over for an (admittedly pretty large) bribe.
If anyone else has read this book, I'd like to talk about some of the characterization choices for Veronica near the end; I think it is in character, but I didn't expect the book to go there, so I was rather surprised.
What I’m Reading Now
Volume 2 of The Gulag Archipelago. I've just gotten through the part about the Belomar canal, which chewed up tens of thousands of prisoners in its construction... and ended up being so shallow (because the construction was pushed through so fast) that barely any boats could actually use it. Tens of thousands of prisoners, dead for nothing.
I suppose it's not really that much worse than if they died for something - they're still dead either way, after all. But somehow it's especially depressing.
What I Plan to Read Next
Guess who FINALLY got Sarah Rees Brennan’s Unmade from the library! Yes, that’s right, ME.
Vintage Murder, one of Ngaio Marsh’s New Zealand-set murder mysteries. I realize she could probably only come up with so many excuses to send her Scotland Yard detective around the world to investigate murders in New Zealand, but I really think it’s too bad she didn’t set more of her mysteries in New Zealand, because they have a certain pop! that her English mysteries don’t have.
I think it’s partly lack of competition. English Golden Age mysteries are thick on the ground, but I can’t think of anyone else who wrote New Zealand Golden Age mysteries. (Admittedly, I haven’t made an exhaustive search. Or really much of a search at all. Maybe New Zealand has a secret groundswell of mystery novels of which I know nothing.)
Continuing the mystery theme, I also read the new Veronica Mars book, Mr. Kiss-and-Tell, which is about 1) investigating a rape, and 2) trying to vote the sleezy corrupt sheriff out of office. I am always a little leery of mystery novels that center around a rape, because there are so many ways that can go wrong; but I thought this one did all right. The damage is clearly fairly brutal, but none of the rapes are graphically described.
And the fight against corruption, as one would expect from Veronica Mars, is pretty excellent, although I wasn't sure about Weevil's decision to chicken out of the lawsuit at a crucial moment. I get that he has a wife and a daughter to look after, but come on, man, kicking out police officers who do stuff like plant evidence and take bribes is protecting your wife and kid! In a long-term way. And would Weevil really let down all the other people who are depending on him like that?
I think I might have liked it better if the sheriff had threatened him, instead of Weevil just rolling over for an (admittedly pretty large) bribe.
If anyone else has read this book, I'd like to talk about some of the characterization choices for Veronica near the end; I think it is in character, but I didn't expect the book to go there, so I was rather surprised.
What I’m Reading Now
Volume 2 of The Gulag Archipelago. I've just gotten through the part about the Belomar canal, which chewed up tens of thousands of prisoners in its construction... and ended up being so shallow (because the construction was pushed through so fast) that barely any boats could actually use it. Tens of thousands of prisoners, dead for nothing.
I suppose it's not really that much worse than if they died for something - they're still dead either way, after all. But somehow it's especially depressing.
What I Plan to Read Next
Guess who FINALLY got Sarah Rees Brennan’s Unmade from the library! Yes, that’s right, ME.
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no subject
Date: 2015-05-13 11:21 pm (UTC)It's lack of competition, but I think it's also that the landscape is present in the New Zealand books in a way it doesn't seem to be when the books are set in England. It's specific and weighs something.
Plus you get all that beautifully mundane detective-novel detail (about office procedures and retail work and transportation and all those other little things that don't show up as much in "regular" fiction) about a place that hasn't been covered much.
This list seems to be mostly books published in the 90s or later, with only a few outliers.
Honestly, Marsh was perfectly good at coming up with excuses for people to be murdered spectacularly in the middle of public performances; she could have come up with more excuses to get Alleyn to New Zealand. Or just made him a New Zealander, though I don't know if that would suit her aesthetic as well as whatever Alleyn is supposed to be like.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 12:44 pm (UTC)But perhaps he could have been an Englishman banished to the New Zealand police force, for reasons undisclosed but implied to relate to a scandal with a high political figure, whose iniquities Alleyn threatened to expose? That seems like a suitably noble-minded backstory. At first he yearns to return to England, but then he falls in love with New Zealand and its beautiful landscape and stays. Perhaps with occasional trips to England to cover particularly English crimes.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-15 04:05 pm (UTC)