![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneI was looking for more award-winning murder mysteries, trying to find new authors I like again. This time I accidentally ended up reading two novels written in 1990 and set in Spain in 1990, just like... by accident.
The funniest part of them was definitely the detailed descriptions of what people were wearing.
But aside from that, we have GIANT HOMOPHOBIA YIKES FAIL in one and an interesting lesbian novel with a window back into 1990 queer politics in the other.
The Flanders Panel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte was originally Spanish, and I read it in translation. The mystery revolves around a medieval painting by one of the Dutch masters and the protagonist is an art restorer, and the book is art and antiquities dealing and art restoration, medieval history, and chess. In spite of some of those "Oh I see a man wrote this female POV" moments - several were a bit eyerolly but none were too offensive - and a few more moments where I failed to believe the heroine was being so dumb, this book and its plot was just a lot more fun and engaging. It would be hard to find a setting/context more exciting and interesting to me, though - this one combines several of my areas of interest without any of the specific things that I know more about, so the stuff was recognizable and interesting but not things I already knew. As a result, up until the end twist and the solution, I was enjoying this book HUGELY. The problem is that the solution was . So the protagonist's mentor-figure is a gay antique dealer, an old-world gentleman sort of dude, who sort of took her under his wing after the death of her father when she was 9, so he's been a quasi-parental figure since she was a child and is her primary attachment, her actual parents being out of the picture. There's a moment where her best friend is scolding her for being single and says something about an Elektra-Oedipal complex and she denies it, and I at first took this for a signal we're supposed to judge her friend for it... except the book drops stuff about this about three more times, two of them entirely in internal monologue, clearly intended to give credence to it. The protagonist wanted to grow up and marry him, and she was joking but not really... she calls back to it now but she's joking but not really... one time she kissed him on the lips and they've never spoken of it again, but really she can't find a man because they're not him... etc. This is enough layers of Yikes onion to be a whole Youtube video by itself. BUT THEN. Her mentor is the killer. Yeah. The painting itself contains a historical murder mystery couched in a chess problem and they solve it, but then her ex turns up dead and they start getting notes from the killer who taunts them and goes on to murder her best friend as well, and she and her chess master consultant and her mentor (purportedly) all think they can be next, only it turns out it was her mentor... and the REASON for all these murders was that when he saw how enchanted she was with the chess problem, in spite of a complete lack of previous murdering, he apparently just went off because he saw a perfect way to create a 'fantasy quest' for her that would lead to self-actualization while simultaneously 'freeing' her of her sleazy ex and her coke-addicted best friend who were holding her back, so he killed them using the secret chess master skills that he's never mentioned to anyone since he was a teenager. It gets worse: there's a whole lot of 'but what gender ARE gay people, really?' sort of 90s-style nonsense in this book, and in the denoument they decide that because he's gay, her mentor is like a split personality, a good half which is the sweet fatherly dude she's in love with (the white knight) and an evil half which is a predatory and murderous femme fatale who does Bad Sex Stuff with Dudes (the black queen). Which somehow makes perfect sense because chess itself 'is like a split personality' because black represents evil and white represents good, or something. And also it makes perfect sense that he just loved living in a fantasy world of dragon-vanquishing adventures and make believe too much and somehow being gay + murder mystery painting just sent him over the edge. I recommend that nobody read this book unless they're researching homophobic tropes in literature or something like it.
Gaudí Afternoon by Barbara Wilson, on the other hand, is the first in a queer mystery series where the sleuth is a globe-trotting freelance translator and lesbian free spirit who can't stand to be tied down to a country, job, residence, or romantic relationship, and just has a lot of one-night stands and flings and exes around the world and stumbles into sleuthing by mistake when a friend of a friend offers her a lot of money to go to Barcelona with her and interpret while she tries to track down her estranged husband. This book has several trans characters in it, and being written in 1990, the terminology is different from how it is today, but the author and the protagonist are both well-meaning and accepting of it, but that isn't the case for all the characters. As a result the book is also full of Gender, but in a much more self-aware way, albeit nothing groundbreaking if you've engaged with queer and trans and gender issues before. Respectability politics and queer culture, drag and transvestites, shitty terf talking points, the meaning(s) of motherhood, the architecture of Gaudí, and some weird erotic foot massage show up, but one thing that does not show up is murder. I can't remember the last time I read a mystery that didn't have a murder: I was completely shocked by the absence here. Also, while the laidback meandering of the story was entertaining, it wasn't particularly mysterious in any other way either (though there were definitely things she didn't know as a result of people lying to her, and a kind of mission that had to do with stuff to find out and she did 'solve' the mystery - ie figure out what had been going on - but it was more like a melodramatic interpersonal situation she got caught up in with some exasperating people, less like a case she decided to pursue). I doubt I will read any more of this series. I recognize the realness of the bits of queer culture I'm seeing here, and particularly the narrator herself, who is of the same generation of lesbian as our tenant; and I'm fond of this character type, but I ultimately find it a bit bewildering and tough to empathize with as a protagonist, though I'd love to hang out with her and listen to her stories for hours and hours. Anyway, I could definitely happily recommend this book to lots of people who would probably love it - although trigger warning for the terf talking points and other scattered transphobic behavior from fictional characters, which isn't endorsed by the text or the protagonist but also isn't really told off the way you'd like it to be - but it still wasn't as fun or engaging at any point as the beginning of the horrible one.
The funniest part of them was definitely the detailed descriptions of what people were wearing.
But aside from that, we have GIANT HOMOPHOBIA YIKES FAIL in one and an interesting lesbian novel with a window back into 1990 queer politics in the other.
The Flanders Panel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte was originally Spanish, and I read it in translation. The mystery revolves around a medieval painting by one of the Dutch masters and the protagonist is an art restorer, and the book is art and antiquities dealing and art restoration, medieval history, and chess. In spite of some of those "Oh I see a man wrote this female POV" moments - several were a bit eyerolly but none were too offensive - and a few more moments where I failed to believe the heroine was being so dumb, this book and its plot was just a lot more fun and engaging. It would be hard to find a setting/context more exciting and interesting to me, though - this one combines several of my areas of interest without any of the specific things that I know more about, so the stuff was recognizable and interesting but not things I already knew. As a result, up until the end twist and the solution, I was enjoying this book HUGELY. The problem is that the solution was . So the protagonist's mentor-figure is a gay antique dealer, an old-world gentleman sort of dude, who sort of took her under his wing after the death of her father when she was 9, so he's been a quasi-parental figure since she was a child and is her primary attachment, her actual parents being out of the picture. There's a moment where her best friend is scolding her for being single and says something about an Elektra-Oedipal complex and she denies it, and I at first took this for a signal we're supposed to judge her friend for it... except the book drops stuff about this about three more times, two of them entirely in internal monologue, clearly intended to give credence to it. The protagonist wanted to grow up and marry him, and she was joking but not really... she calls back to it now but she's joking but not really... one time she kissed him on the lips and they've never spoken of it again, but really she can't find a man because they're not him... etc. This is enough layers of Yikes onion to be a whole Youtube video by itself. BUT THEN. Her mentor is the killer. Yeah. The painting itself contains a historical murder mystery couched in a chess problem and they solve it, but then her ex turns up dead and they start getting notes from the killer who taunts them and goes on to murder her best friend as well, and she and her chess master consultant and her mentor (purportedly) all think they can be next, only it turns out it was her mentor... and the REASON for all these murders was that when he saw how enchanted she was with the chess problem, in spite of a complete lack of previous murdering, he apparently just went off because he saw a perfect way to create a 'fantasy quest' for her that would lead to self-actualization while simultaneously 'freeing' her of her sleazy ex and her coke-addicted best friend who were holding her back, so he killed them using the secret chess master skills that he's never mentioned to anyone since he was a teenager. It gets worse: there's a whole lot of 'but what gender ARE gay people, really?' sort of 90s-style nonsense in this book, and in the denoument they decide that because he's gay, her mentor is like a split personality, a good half which is the sweet fatherly dude she's in love with (the white knight) and an evil half which is a predatory and murderous femme fatale who does Bad Sex Stuff with Dudes (the black queen). Which somehow makes perfect sense because chess itself 'is like a split personality' because black represents evil and white represents good, or something. And also it makes perfect sense that he just loved living in a fantasy world of dragon-vanquishing adventures and make believe too much and somehow being gay + murder mystery painting just sent him over the edge. I recommend that nobody read this book unless they're researching homophobic tropes in literature or something like it.
Gaudí Afternoon by Barbara Wilson, on the other hand, is the first in a queer mystery series where the sleuth is a globe-trotting freelance translator and lesbian free spirit who can't stand to be tied down to a country, job, residence, or romantic relationship, and just has a lot of one-night stands and flings and exes around the world and stumbles into sleuthing by mistake when a friend of a friend offers her a lot of money to go to Barcelona with her and interpret while she tries to track down her estranged husband. This book has several trans characters in it, and being written in 1990, the terminology is different from how it is today, but the author and the protagonist are both well-meaning and accepting of it, but that isn't the case for all the characters. As a result the book is also full of Gender, but in a much more self-aware way, albeit nothing groundbreaking if you've engaged with queer and trans and gender issues before. Respectability politics and queer culture, drag and transvestites, shitty terf talking points, the meaning(s) of motherhood, the architecture of Gaudí, and some weird erotic foot massage show up, but one thing that does not show up is murder. I can't remember the last time I read a mystery that didn't have a murder: I was completely shocked by the absence here. Also, while the laidback meandering of the story was entertaining, it wasn't particularly mysterious in any other way either (though there were definitely things she didn't know as a result of people lying to her, and a kind of mission that had to do with stuff to find out and she did 'solve' the mystery - ie figure out what had been going on - but it was more like a melodramatic interpersonal situation she got caught up in with some exasperating people, less like a case she decided to pursue). I doubt I will read any more of this series. I recognize the realness of the bits of queer culture I'm seeing here, and particularly the narrator herself, who is of the same generation of lesbian as our tenant; and I'm fond of this character type, but I ultimately find it a bit bewildering and tough to empathize with as a protagonist, though I'd love to hang out with her and listen to her stories for hours and hours. Anyway, I could definitely happily recommend this book to lots of people who would probably love it - although trigger warning for the terf talking points and other scattered transphobic behavior from fictional characters, which isn't endorsed by the text or the protagonist but also isn't really told off the way you'd like it to be - but it still wasn't as fun or engaging at any point as the beginning of the horrible one.
