Martin Edwards, The Golden Age of Murder
HarperCollins.
2015
ISBN-13: 978-0008105969
Also available in ebook
formats
Encyclopedic (518 pages) consideration of mystery fiction from (roughly) 1920
to 1940, with a focus on The Detection Club. Edwards clearly considers Dorothy
Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Anthony Berkeley to be the most important figures.
However, he provides discussions of a host of other writers as well (to many to
list completely here, but including Ronald Knox, the Coles, John Connington,
John Rhode, Anthony Gilbert, Gladys Mitchell...The difficulty with trying to
cover such a range of writers is that we are almost forced, at least
provisionally, to accept Edwards' judgments. He could not, even if he wanted
to, provide us with enough quoted material from so many authors to allow us to
see for ourselves their strengths and weaknesses. I did not disagree much with
his assessments of authors whose work I know fairly well (Sayers, Christie,
Knox, Carr, and some others), although I consider (for example) Busman's
Honeymoon to be a stronger work than he does, and I'm less of a fan of
Christie--she plots well, her solutions are ingenious (if sometimes forced, in
my opinion), but I do not think she did a particularly outstanding job of
characterization, even of her principals. (One reason movies of Christie's
books work so well, again in my opinion, is that there is not a strong
characterization in the books to which the actors must bend. Hence Margaret
Rutherford *and* Joan Hickson as Jane Marple.) This is not, I should note, am
academic work--it is dreadfully under-sourced and had no comprehensive
bibliography at the end, even of the authors' books. Still, it is an extremely
well-written, comprehensive view of the period, and well worth reading.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Sunday, June 21, 2015
On Father's Day
A friend posted this on her FB page:
And I find myself thinking...I have no idea what my father was passionate about. As a boy, he became an Eagle Scout--but never talked about it to his kids, never suggested that we get into scouts. He finished second in the Indianapolis Parks tennis tournament one year...but never (to my knowledge) played tennis as an adult (although my younger brother did).
When I was a kid, he got involved with the YMCA "Indian Guides" program, even helping people get "tribes" started, and especially in the African-American community. But I don't remember his doing anything with it after I was 10 or 12 (say, 1960 or later).
He did not like to travel; he did not care for theater (or television); he had no particular interest in music (although Mom did--she started college as a music major, and played piano throughout her life). He read mysteries, but never talked about them. He tracked his investment portfolio (manually), but never talked about it.
He had no hobbies that I can remember. He played golf for a while in the early 1960s, but stopped (the club we belonged to was purchased to build an interstate highway, and he never joined another, never played much on public courses); by the mid-'60s, he was working such long hours, and often through the weekend, that he had neither time nor energy, even if he had had the inclination. He was not a "joiner" (he did not, for example, become a member of the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars, although he could have). He knew how to play bridge, but didn't play much either socially or at all competitively. He played some poker, but I wouldn't say it was a passion. He liked baseball, but never much went to baseball games. (I grew up in Indianapolis, and we went to maybe a half a dozen games that I can remember in the late 1950s, early 1960s; we went to one game in Chicago, as a part of a trip to see some friends of my parents who had mover there; he went to one or two Cincinnati Reds games a year after he retired...didn't watch baseball on TV). He and Mom went to horse races in Cincinnati and Louisville in the late 1970s and 1980s, but not all that often, once or twice a year.
I could go on, but it seems pointless.
My father's passions included baseball (watching), tennis (playing), photography (taking), and Broadway musicals (attending). Of those, I inherited only the Broadway gene. How about you? Any of your father's interests that you have, too?
And I find myself thinking...I have no idea what my father was passionate about. As a boy, he became an Eagle Scout--but never talked about it to his kids, never suggested that we get into scouts. He finished second in the Indianapolis Parks tennis tournament one year...but never (to my knowledge) played tennis as an adult (although my younger brother did).
When I was a kid, he got involved with the YMCA "Indian Guides" program, even helping people get "tribes" started, and especially in the African-American community. But I don't remember his doing anything with it after I was 10 or 12 (say, 1960 or later).
He did not like to travel; he did not care for theater (or television); he had no particular interest in music (although Mom did--she started college as a music major, and played piano throughout her life). He read mysteries, but never talked about them. He tracked his investment portfolio (manually), but never talked about it.
He had no hobbies that I can remember. He played golf for a while in the early 1960s, but stopped (the club we belonged to was purchased to build an interstate highway, and he never joined another, never played much on public courses); by the mid-'60s, he was working such long hours, and often through the weekend, that he had neither time nor energy, even if he had had the inclination. He was not a "joiner" (he did not, for example, become a member of the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars, although he could have). He knew how to play bridge, but didn't play much either socially or at all competitively. He played some poker, but I wouldn't say it was a passion. He liked baseball, but never much went to baseball games. (I grew up in Indianapolis, and we went to maybe a half a dozen games that I can remember in the late 1950s, early 1960s; we went to one game in Chicago, as a part of a trip to see some friends of my parents who had mover there; he went to one or two Cincinnati Reds games a year after he retired...didn't watch baseball on TV). He and Mom went to horse races in Cincinnati and Louisville in the late 1970s and 1980s, but not all that often, once or twice a year.
I could go on, but it seems pointless.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Continuing my copycat photoblogging...
Chris Bertram's Sunday Photoblogging has this beautiful sunset shot.
I have this, taken in Italy (sunset over the Ligurian Sea, near Livorno, 2002). I don't title many of my photos, but this is "The Phantom Photographer."
I have this, taken in Italy (sunset over the Ligurian Sea, near Livorno, 2002). I don't title many of my photos, but this is "The Phantom Photographer."
Sunday, May 31, 2015
New art
Not newly created, but newly purchased. We'd sort of sworn off buying anything else, but we saw these more than a decade ago, and then lost the information about them. Three are "beach boxes" on the beaches of Melbourne, Australia--at the time, you could buy one for about $185,000, and then pay a monthly fee (like a condo) for it. The other is a gas station, obviously at night, in Melbourne, Florida (yeah). They're by an American photographer, Judy Gelles.
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Yet another copycat photoblogging session
Chris Bertram has motor scooters in Florence; I have them in Rome (from 2002) and Pisa (2005).
Rome
Pisa
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Continuing someone else's series: Randall Garrett and Michael Kurland
Randall Garrett, who wrote an immense amount of science fiction/fantasy (17
novels and hundreds of short stories), also wrote a (brief) alternative-universe
series of mysteries. In this series, Richard the Lionhearted did not die, his
brother John did not become king (and presumably, also, the Magna Carta was
never written), and the Plantagenet dynasty continued into the 20th century.
The series won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Special Achievement Award
in 1999 (initiated in 1995, and usually awarded at the SFF World Con) Garrett's
three books were
Too Many Magicians (1966; novel)
Murder and Magic (1979; shorts)
Lord Darcy Investigates (1981; shorts)
Garrett died in 1987, just days after his 60th birthday.
(All that information comes from Wikipedia articles; google Garrett by name and the name of the award if you want more information.)
Michael Kurland (SYKM page: http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/K_Authors/Kurland_Michael.html), who, in his introductions to the two books he wrote, described Garrett as a good friend, took up the series after Garrett's death, publishing two Lord Darcy novels, Ten Little Magicians (1988) and A Study in Sorcery (1989); I don't need to tell you the sources for those titles. Both are available now as ebooks, which is how I found them.
Ten Little Magicians involves the investiture of King John's heir to the throne, which is threatened by a series of killings of wizards. Each of the killings is accompanied by a poem based on the same nursery rhyme Agatha Christie used. Here's the first one:
"Ten little wizards sat down to dine.
One wizard stuffed his face--and now there are nine"
It's well-written, and moves nicely, but the killer is fairly obvious, as is how he committed at least one of the locked-room mysteries in the book.
In A Study in Sorcery (1989), Darcy and his magician associate are sent to "New England"--North America as a whole--involving the strange death of an Aztec prince just prior to the planned signing of an Anglo-Aztec treaty. Generally well-done, but the murderer is (again) fairly obvious.
Kurland does a nice job of continuing Garrett's creation of an essentially medieval society in the 20th century, lacking much of the technology we take for granted, and in which magic works. In fact, in some ways his plots are stronger than Garrett's, As a hook for a series, it's interesting, but I suspect that it would have become difficult to continue for much longer, even had the books sold well enough.
Kurland has written a lot, but none of his series characters seems to generate enough of a following to be continued. His Moriarity series seems to have done better than the others {with 5 entries spanning 1979 [the Edgar nominated The Infernal Device (for best paperback original) to 2014 [Who Thinks Evil]}.
I've found Kurland's books to be readable and fun, but not overly compelling; I think the two Alexander Brass books (Too Soon Dead and The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes) are by far his best work.
Too Many Magicians (1966; novel)
Murder and Magic (1979; shorts)
Lord Darcy Investigates (1981; shorts)
Garrett died in 1987, just days after his 60th birthday.
(All that information comes from Wikipedia articles; google Garrett by name and the name of the award if you want more information.)
Michael Kurland (SYKM page: http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/K_Authors/Kurland_Michael.html), who, in his introductions to the two books he wrote, described Garrett as a good friend, took up the series after Garrett's death, publishing two Lord Darcy novels, Ten Little Magicians (1988) and A Study in Sorcery (1989); I don't need to tell you the sources for those titles. Both are available now as ebooks, which is how I found them.
Ten Little Magicians involves the investiture of King John's heir to the throne, which is threatened by a series of killings of wizards. Each of the killings is accompanied by a poem based on the same nursery rhyme Agatha Christie used. Here's the first one:
"Ten little wizards sat down to dine.
One wizard stuffed his face--and now there are nine"
It's well-written, and moves nicely, but the killer is fairly obvious, as is how he committed at least one of the locked-room mysteries in the book.
In A Study in Sorcery (1989), Darcy and his magician associate are sent to "New England"--North America as a whole--involving the strange death of an Aztec prince just prior to the planned signing of an Anglo-Aztec treaty. Generally well-done, but the murderer is (again) fairly obvious.
Kurland does a nice job of continuing Garrett's creation of an essentially medieval society in the 20th century, lacking much of the technology we take for granted, and in which magic works. In fact, in some ways his plots are stronger than Garrett's, As a hook for a series, it's interesting, but I suspect that it would have become difficult to continue for much longer, even had the books sold well enough.
Kurland has written a lot, but none of his series characters seems to generate enough of a following to be continued. His Moriarity series seems to have done better than the others {with 5 entries spanning 1979 [the Edgar nominated The Infernal Device (for best paperback original) to 2014 [Who Thinks Evil]}.
I've found Kurland's books to be readable and fun, but not overly compelling; I think the two Alexander Brass books (Too Soon Dead and The Girls in the High-Heeled Shoes) are by far his best work.
Sunday, May 3, 2015
More copycat photoblogging
Today, over at Crooked Timber, Chris Bertram has a photo of a building reflected in (I'm guessing) the Adriatic. I have trees reflected in the Canal du Midi in France (taken in 2000).
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