Recent reading
May. 14th, 2022 05:12 pmRead two different mysteries that featured bodies in the gymnasium of an all-girls school: Agatha Christie's Cat Among the Pigeons (1959) and Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes (1947). Otherwise completely different books— the Christie is one of her Poirot books, but arguably the story's real detective is the plucky teenage daughter of a former spy, and features more international intrigue and missing jewels than "murder mystery at an all-girls school" would suggest. The Tey is sort of an anti-detective novel— the titular Miss Pym, a visiting lecturer on psychology at a women's physical training college when tragedy strikes, not only stumbles across her clues by accident but has a tendency to absently pick them up and stick them in her pocket, miss their significance, or actively suppress their existence; you get the sense that a mystery narrative is doing its best to coalesce around her and she's trying equally hard to slither out of it.
I enjoyed both, but I suspect that Tey's will stick in my head for longer: among other reasons, because I love (as a literary dynamic) a good unhealthily intense, codependent friendship, and hoo boy does this deliver. ( Read more... )
I have a number of books currently in progress, but the one worth mentioning now is The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett;![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants piqued my interest by comparing Peter Wimsey-as-Harlequin in Murder Must Advertise to Dunnett's Francis Crawford of Lymond. I'm always a sucker for charming rogues roped into geopolitical intrigue - see Megan Whalen Turner, Scott Lynch, and Lynn Flewelling - but Lymond is probably the most... intense... version of this trope I've encountered. So far, it's unclear what his motivations are, which has me feeling like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop— the reader is supposed to root for him, right??? It's called the Lymond Chronicles, so one would assume, but he's just set his family castle on fire with his mother and sister-in-law inside and generally appears to be working against both the Scottish and English, so I feel like I'm missing something. I'm really liking this book, though!
Dracula Daily finally got me hooked into the story enough that I was too impatient to wait for the updates, so now I'm just reading Dracula.
I enjoyed both, but I suspect that Tey's will stick in my head for longer: among other reasons, because I love (as a literary dynamic) a good unhealthily intense, codependent friendship, and hoo boy does this deliver. ( Read more... )
I have a number of books currently in progress, but the one worth mentioning now is The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett;
skygiants piqued my interest by comparing Peter Wimsey-as-Harlequin in Murder Must Advertise to Dunnett's Francis Crawford of Lymond. I'm always a sucker for charming rogues roped into geopolitical intrigue - see Megan Whalen Turner, Scott Lynch, and Lynn Flewelling - but Lymond is probably the most... intense... version of this trope I've encountered. So far, it's unclear what his motivations are, which has me feeling like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop— the reader is supposed to root for him, right??? It's called the Lymond Chronicles, so one would assume, but he's just set his family castle on fire with his mother and sister-in-law inside and generally appears to be working against both the Scottish and English, so I feel like I'm missing something. I'm really liking this book, though!Dracula Daily finally got me hooked into the story enough that I was too impatient to wait for the updates, so now I'm just reading Dracula.
