Reading Wednesday
May. 26th, 2021 09:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxRead The Crooked Wreath by Christianna Brand, yet another 1940s murder mystery— an elderly lord is found murdered shortly after declaring his intention to disinherit his grandchildren (for various infractions, ranging from having an affair to just being kind of a twit) and the new will, which he may or may not have already signed, is missing. I feel like Brand came at the mystery from a rather unique angle; her detective largely hovers on the sidelines, and the focus is really on the suspects, who spend less time being interviewed by Inspector Cockrill (nicknamed, unfortunately, Cockie) than in discussing their theories with each other.
The ending was absolutely bonkers. Not so much in terms of whodunnit, but the circumstances of the reveal— while all the main suspects are gathered outside and the detective is trying to goad the murderer into confessing, a German bomb gets dropped on the old ancestral pile (!) and the cousin who the detective has seemingly just accused of the murder runs in to save the baby who's still in the now-burning house (!!) and gets trapped inside after successfully handing the baby down from a balcony and is like "well everyone* thinks I did it so I might as well die" AND THEN the cousin who actually did do the murder runs in to save him, and then they die, after the non-murderous cousin is successfully saved.
* He also thinks that he may have done it, since he is a teenage hypochondriac whose hobby is lying to psychiatrists and, inconveniently, had spent the day before the murder telling anyone who'd listen about how his therapist had just diagnosed him as susceptible to going into "fugues," in which he might do anything without knowing about it - killing someone, for example - and the murderer took advantage of this to gaslight him (and the rest of the family) into thinking he actually was going into fugues in order to frame him for the murder. There was a lot going on, here. I was pretty sure he wasn't actually going to end up being the murderer, because that would be too obvious, but I was fond enough of the character that if he had, well, he could have a little murder, as a treat.
I've jumped on the bandwagon and started reading Emma Southon's A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome! I agree with the general critique that Southon's narrative voice sometimes has a self-consciousness to it that inadvertently loops around to coming across as kind of condescending, but I actually don't find this as annoying as I might have done if I hadn't recently read Helena Kelly's book on Jane Austen, the tone of which was frequently just straight-up condescending on purpose.
The ending was absolutely bonkers. Not so much in terms of whodunnit, but the circumstances of the reveal— while all the main suspects are gathered outside and the detective is trying to goad the murderer into confessing, a German bomb gets dropped on the old ancestral pile (!) and the cousin who the detective has seemingly just accused of the murder runs in to save the baby who's still in the now-burning house (!!) and gets trapped inside after successfully handing the baby down from a balcony and is like "well everyone* thinks I did it so I might as well die" AND THEN the cousin who actually did do the murder runs in to save him, and then they die, after the non-murderous cousin is successfully saved.
* He also thinks that he may have done it, since he is a teenage hypochondriac whose hobby is lying to psychiatrists and, inconveniently, had spent the day before the murder telling anyone who'd listen about how his therapist had just diagnosed him as susceptible to going into "fugues," in which he might do anything without knowing about it - killing someone, for example - and the murderer took advantage of this to gaslight him (and the rest of the family) into thinking he actually was going into fugues in order to frame him for the murder. There was a lot going on, here. I was pretty sure he wasn't actually going to end up being the murderer, because that would be too obvious, but I was fond enough of the character that if he had, well, he could have a little murder, as a treat.
I've jumped on the bandwagon and started reading Emma Southon's A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome! I agree with the general critique that Southon's narrative voice sometimes has a self-consciousness to it that inadvertently loops around to coming across as kind of condescending, but I actually don't find this as annoying as I might have done if I hadn't recently read Helena Kelly's book on Jane Austen, the tone of which was frequently just straight-up condescending on purpose.
