Strong Poison
Jul. 6th, 2017 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I have begun Strong Poison, and it is fabulous! Peter Wimsey has just proposed to Harriet Vane at their very first meeting (while she is behind bars on a murder charge) and is adorably taken aback when she tells him he's #47. Everyone wants to marry a possible murderess!
A part of me wants to just stay in and read it all day, buuuut I am in Ann Arbor, Land of Bookstores, so I think I must sally forth to contemplate their offerings. After I've had my tea. During which I can surely read a couple more chapters.
A part of me wants to just stay in and read it all day, buuuut I am in Ann Arbor, Land of Bookstores, so I think I must sally forth to contemplate their offerings. After I've had my tea. During which I can surely read a couple more chapters.
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Date: 2017-07-06 01:10 pm (UTC)WHAT IF I GREW A MUSTACHE OR SOMETHING WOULD THAT HELP
DO YOU WANT SOME LETTERS OF REFERENCE
I'm a little sorry you made it to A2 ten years too late for me to meet you for tea and desserts, but I'm glad you're there now & (hopefully) enjoying the bookstores!
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Date: 2017-07-07 01:08 am (UTC)I could not restrain myself from finishing the book, and I have thoughts about it, but for now I will content myself with noting that there is some Impromptu Face Detection in here: people with large blue eyes, it seems, are generally unstable. Does this contradict the face detection in Josephine Tey, or should we just assume this is a different kind of blue eye than the one that shows one to be an oversexed villainess?
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Date: 2017-07-07 06:10 am (UTC)I am sorry to say that I read Strong Poison before becoming aware of the face detection craze, so this element totally escaped my notice until now! (possibly also eclipsed in my mind by the more prominent element of Judgmental Sugar Shaming).
I like to imagine Teyian face science as a collection of seemingly arbitrary signs with no logical connection to each other or to how faces actually work, but probably a dedicated face detective would tell you it contradicts nothing; oversexed villainy and being susceptible to table-tapping are two points on the continuum of emotional instability of which blue eyes are an infallible indicator. You can tell which kind by the size, shade, and spacing of the eyes.
(Alleyn, overhearing this conversation, pays us the compliment of briefly neglecting to disguise his disdain. Thanks, Alleyn <3).
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Date: 2017-07-07 09:46 am (UTC)I seem to recall that light blue eyes were the sure sign of a liar, but those dark blue eyes of sex-crazed killers are the worst. (I stay at home to protect the universe from me. Goodness only knows what I might do otherwise!)
Instability is no doubt a natural side effect of one or both.
Alleyn, overhearing this conversation, pays us the compliment of briefly neglecting to disguise his disdain. Thanks, Alleyn <3
<3 <3 <3
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Date: 2017-07-07 10:08 am (UTC)Pre-emptively darkened, that is, since my eyes at least are the same color they've always been. But they knew! They knew from the start, and they darkened accordingly. Like Cassandra, they did the best they could.
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Date: 2017-07-07 11:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-07 12:52 pm (UTC)I imagine Alleyn and Lord Peter meeting at a party sometime, perhaps thrown by Peter's constable friend Parker, and the two of them are a bit baffled by each other until Peter essays a Shakespeare quote at which point Alleyn lights up and they hit it off like two old friends.
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Date: 2017-07-07 01:15 pm (UTC)and the two of them are a bit baffled by each other until Peter essays a Shakespeare quote at which point Alleyn lights up and they hit it off like two old friends.
:D
I am 100% convinced that they already know each other from school, and also that Alleyn is periodically annoyed by reporters who confuse them with one another, despite them being obviously NOTHING ALIKE >:|. They both canonically went to Eton, and they're around the same age in 1934, though Alleyn's detective stasis will eventually cause them to drift apart.
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Date: 2017-07-08 01:31 am (UTC)HE WOULD. Oh Peter.
Also yesss, I love the idea of Peter and Alleyn knowing each other in school, although I suspect that as teenagers they would not hit it off at allll. I'm assuming Peter was already goofy and foppish, and Alleyn was probably much more serious (and possibly played cricket? I could see Alleyn playing cricket, although probably not well enough to be on the eleven).
Did Alleyn fight in World War I? I don't know the early books as well as the later ones, and by the later ones it would be hard to work that in without disturbing the detective stasis.
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Date: 2017-07-08 06:39 pm (UTC)Alleyn's said to have "worked in intelligence" during the war, though I don't remember in which books. I'm pretty sure the earliest books mention it.
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Date: 2017-07-06 06:00 pm (UTC)Aw, that all sounds v nice - ideal, even.
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Date: 2017-07-07 01:04 am (UTC)Then I came back to the house, collected Strong Poison, and read the rest of it in a cafe in the afternoon while eating a lemon bar. Clearly this is what travel is all about.
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Date: 2017-07-06 11:00 pm (UTC)I am really glad you're enjoying it! I hope the whole quartet works as well for you.
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Date: 2017-07-07 01:03 am (UTC)