The Mezzanine

I am currently reading a pre-Christie murder mystery. It is quite fascinating.

...okay, so the author was probably hoping I'd find the actual murder fascinating. What I find fascinating is the book as an historical oddity.

If you read 1930s whodunnits – which I do, avidly – then you will quickly come across scores of policemen bemoaning how challenging their job has become now that everyone reads detective fiction and knows that they need to wear gloves to avoid fingerprints, and so forth. Whether they were correct or not, I can't say. What I can say is that the average murder mystery character in the 1930s is clearly familiar with how crimes are supposed to go.

In the 1930s, they:
- discover the body
- remind each other not to touch anything
- call the doctor
- call the cops
And then the cops:
- take statements, interviewing each person privately
- check for fingerprints
- send bullets etc off for analysis
- contact Scotland Yard

The book I'm currently reading was one of the first of its genre (and somewhat credited with starting the whole murder mystery craze of the 20s and 30s). In this book, they:
- discover the body
- take the gun back to the house so no-one else can use it
- call the master of the house, so that he can tell them what to do
- carry the body up to the house

The master of the house contacts Scotland Yard, and then rings up the local detective to inform him that Scotland Yard have asked him to investigate.

The gun is not analysed for bullets, because that isn't something they've thought of doing yet.

The body is not examined by a doctor, because she's clearly dead – and what else could he do?

The members of the household are asked for their movements in front of whoever else happens to be there at the time.



...seriously, it's weirding me out.

Very cross with my edition of The Naughtiest Girl in the School, right now.


This book was written in the 1940s.
The kids are given two pounds each week for pocket money.
Said pounds are made up of 100 pence each.


GRRR.


Judicious googling confirms my suspicion that the original edition had them receiving two shillings each week.

Why, oh why do people think these things need to be dumbed down? Either the kids won't notice the weird currency, or else they WILL notice and will therefore LEARN something!



This is actually annoying me more than the American editions of Harry Potter.

Read a murder mystery today, in which the killer got away with it.

As a veteran of whodunits, I'm quite used to stories from the perspective of the killer, or where the killer gets away. They can work well - but, the thing is, they kinda depend on you sympathising with the killer.

If the book's from the killer's perspective, they can still be a horrible person, but you need at least some kind of reason to see things from their point of view. And, if the killer gets away with the murder, you really really need to understand where the killer's coming from, and to mostly agree with their point of view.

If Ms Jones is taking out Evil McNastison, vile wretch, kidnapper of cute little girls, and puppy killer, then the fact that she gets away with stabbing him might just be something we're okay with. If, on the other hand, Ms Jones gets away with stabbing Cheapskate McDouche, who didn't pay his parking tickets, we might think she's overreacting. And we'll probably get a bit more disapproving about the whole got-away-with-murder thing.


...all of which is a long, round-about way of saying:

If your murder mystery, from 1930, has someone getting away with murdering a Foul Fiend who
a) has an affair with a married woman
b) dumps said married woman because he's out of cash
c) proposes to a rich chick because he needs more cash
...and that's it...
then your 21st century murder mystery fan, reading your fabulous novel, will not necessarily approve of you letting the murderer off the hook.

No matter how much you have the other characters gasp and say things like "what a cad!", I'm still not going to be happy about them killing him. He's just not evil enough.



(Agatha Christie was so much better at this. I've seen other authors go with Mr Marries-For-Money and Mr Complains-About-The-Church-In-His-Newspaper being killed with the approval of the other characters - and apparently the author - but the Values Dissonance stopped those being okay pretty quickly. Whereas Christie, when she wanted to let the killer go free, made her victim kidnap and murder a three-year-old. That's still pretty effective.)

I have recently been reading Dracula. I figured that, well, it's a classic, and also, it's free, so why not?

It's actually quite good. (Which I wasn't at all expecting. Despite it being a classic. Because I'm kinda dumb.) It's also an epistolary novel, which is exactly my kind of thing.

So... hurrah! Dracula!



One thing I found rather amusing is that, as a 21st-century reader, I interpret some sentences differently to the average 19th-century gothic novel fan.
Like this:

Here Quincey Morris added, "I understand that the Count comes from a wolf country, and it may be that he shall get there before us. I propose that we add Winchesters to our armament. I have a kind of belief in a Winchester when there is any trouble of that sort around."

...so, there they were, hunting down Dracula, and someone made the very sensible suggestion that they should bring Sam and Dean along, because those Winchester boys know a thing or two about vampire hunting - and I nodded seriously and got halfway down the page before I realised that wasn't what they'd meant.

I'm not a hopeless fangirl, I swear.

I've recently realised what story I really want from fiction - and that I'm never going to find it unless I write it myself.


My problem is:
- I really like murder mysteries. (ala Agatha Christie, or Castle)
- I really like modern settings which include magic.
- I really don't like stories in which magic is a big deal. (like the Dresden Files)

And the stories I can get are:
a) murder mysteries that do not include magic at all (like Castle)
b) mysteries which are ALL ABOUT THE MAGIC, and the entire story is about "What kind of magic did they use, and how can we defeat it?"
c) mysteries which are ALL ABOUT THE MAGIC, and the entire story is about "Given that we know this definitely was magic, how can we defeat the evil wizard without the muggles finding out about it?"

I really don't like the "must keep magic secret from the muggles" thing. It's silly and annoying. And I don't like stories in which magic plays a major part.

What I want is a story in which the options for theft include picking locks, bribing guards, walking-through-walls spells, and smashing windows. And the detectives have to figure out how the theft was done - and it could have been any of the above, but probably not an Intangibility Ring, because those cost several thousand dollars each, and why would you use one for petty theft when you could be busy stealing the Mona Lisa?

Or a story in which they know the murderer used the confusion potion they found hidden in the kitchen, and have to use patient detective work to figure out which member of the family owned the potion in the first place.

Or the rookie detective suggests using a "detect guilt" spell on all the suspects, and the team's mage rolls her eyes and says sarcastically "Why don't I just cast a 'solve the case' spell, and then we can all go home early!"


That's the story I've been after for about a decade. And... I'm really going to have to write it myself, aren't I?

I gave Alex a Tintin book for his birthday - and hence, read through a Tintin book for the first time in years.

It's... kind of like Nancy Drew.



What I mean is, in ordinary mysteries, the protagonist will discover a set of intriguing and baffling clues, that will slowly lead them to the culprit.

Whereas, in Tintin, what happens is that Tintin finds something purely innocuous. Say... a man has dropped his handkerchief. And Tintin, being a good citizen, picks up the handkerchief and gives it back. Upon which, the man will recognise Tintin, think "Good Lord! Tintin is on my trail!", kidnap him, reveal his part in the evil scheme, and then somehow fail to kill Tintin in his giant death laser.
After this, Tintin will get away from the death laser, get intrigued by this entrancing new mystery, do the smallest of follow-ups - and thus stumble upon the next member of the gang, who will think "Mon Dieu! C'est Tintin!", kidnap him, and reveal a bit more of the evil scheme...

Every. Single. Time. It's uncanny.

Allow me to recommend a book that I've never actually read...


It's called The Floating Admiral, and it was written in 1931 by "members of the Detection Club" (comprising such people as GK Chesterton, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L Sayers, among others).

It is an excellent book in every respect. (As far as I can tell - since, you know, I haven't actually read the thing yet.)


But anyway, it works like this:
- Detector 1 writes the first chapter of a murder mystery, sprinkling clues liberally around the crime scene. He also writes down his solution to the mystery that explains everything perfectly, and puts it in a sealed envelope.
- The first chapter (and the sealed envelope) are then passed to Detector 2. She reads the chapter, figures out what clearly happened, and writes the second chapter - along with a sealed envelope containing her solution to the whole thing.
- Those two chapters go to Detector 3, who starts writing the next bit...

According to their rules, every single writer has to have a clear explanation for the mystery in mind, and have everything they write fit with it. And everyone has to take into account every single clue planted by the earlier writers as well.

WHAT A FUN GAME. AND THERE'S A WHOLE BOOK FROM IT.


As Dorothy L Sayers says in the introduction:

Where one writer may have laid down a clue, thinking that it could point only in one obvious direction, succeeding writers have managed to make it point in a direction exactly opposite. ... We are only too much accustomed to let the great detective say airily: "Cannot you see, my dear Watson, that these facts admit of only one interpretation?" After our experience in the matter of The Floating Admiral, our great detectives may have to learn to express themselves more guardedly...
Speaking for myself, I may say that the helpless bewilderment into which I was plunged on receipt of Mr. Milward Kennedy's little bunch of brain-teasers was, apparently, fully equalled by the hideous sensation of bafflement which overcame Father Ronald Knox when, having, as I fondly imagined, cleared up much that was obscure, I handed the problem on to him.

Doesn't it sound brilliant? So very interesting, and YOU SHOULD ALL GO AND READ IT. EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN'T YET.


Reading of strange murder mysteries scheduled for this weekend, during which I expect to squeal with delight at least six times...

Penhallow really is one of the worst murder mysteries ever written. Georgette Heyer must have been depressed and annoyed with the world when she wrote it, or something - because I can't possibly conceive of how you'd write this book and call it a murder mystery if you were happy.

In this book:
- An unpleasant family spend 200 or so pages being unpleasant to each other.
- Everyone thinks about how much better it would be if Lord Penhallow died.
- Lord Penhallow dies.
- Everyone keeps being unpleasant.
- Everyone gets depressed about how much life still sucks and wasn't improved by Penhallow's death.
- The murderer kills himself, leaving no indication behind as to why he killed Penhallow.
- The detectives wonder why he did it, concluding that it's a "most unsatisfactory case".
- Life goes on - unpleasantly as ever.

...seriously, what was the point?


There are very clear rules as to what's supposed to happen in murder mysteries. Generally, you have
1) at least one person we like
2) a few fun discussions about the murder
3) a grisly, exciting, baffling murder
4) a happy ending
5) lots of interesting clues that solve the case.

I'm not saying you have to have all of them, but this book doesn't have any! It's horrible, depressing, and seems to have been written purely so Heyer could spend 300 pages proving how much life sucks.


*needs some Christie to take away the bad taste*

I've been re-reading Rainbow Valley, from the Anne of Green Gables series.


It's funny, because I have distinct memories of thinking the worst two books in the series were Anne's House of Dreams and Rainbow Valley, with Anne of Ingleside as a nice interlude between them. This time around, though, the worst two books are clearly House of Dreams and Ingleside, with Rainbow Valley being really really fun.

(The two very best Anne books are Anne of the Island and Rilla of Ingleside, as all right-thinking people are well aware.)

I think it's largely vegemite effect, really. The first time I read them, Ingleside was a pleasant-enough recovery from the deeply dull House of Dreams, even if it did focus on Anne's children, rather than on Anne herself. And then, horror of horrors, Rainbow Valley kept forgetting what the story was about and wandering off into digressions on completely different people, not even noticing that whole chapters weren't about the Blythes. Silly author!

This time, though, I know what to expect. Ingleside is silly stories about the Blythe children... and actually isn't all that interesting. Whereas Rainbow Valley is about a completely different family, who just happen to share a neighbourhood with characters we've met before.

I'm expecting it to be about the Meredith family - and in fact it is. And it's really fun.


I still find it odd when I discover myself switching opinions like that.

Here, in no particular order, are various things that really annoy me in novels:

( stupid books with their stupidness )