The genre conversation getting a bit weird

[cimorene]

Certainly all the works in a genre are in conversation with each other, and it's always fun to see how different skilled golden age mystery writers write a Great Detective. There are usually strong shades of Holmes or Poirot in them, sometimes with a dash of genius like Wimsy's dandyism.

And then some of them are really so close that they're more like fanfic of one of the other writers... like John Dickson Carr's Bencolin, a French police detective with a mustache and a goatee and a flair for the dramatic. Apparently the guy wrote several books with this character. The writer himself is one of those who was famous in his day and since largely forgotten. He is remembered chiefly as the master of locked room mysteries, I gather.

Anyway, the character's not always Gothic, but he just decided to do a Gothic novel with his Poirot knockoff, so he has the guy (and his hapless English sidekick, the narrator) invited by a sinister millionaire to investigate the mysterious deaths of a thinly veiled parody of Harry Houdini and his friend, a leading English Shakespearen stage actor, at a castle in Germany called Castle Skull that is literally shaped like a skull. My man just decided to go all out.

There's a fair amount of atmosphere and mood about even though this writer is very dialogue and action driven, like he really should be writing screenplays. He's introduced a world-famous violinist and a rival great sleuth, and his mystery already involves a locked room, a supposed suicide, a lonely midnight rowboat over a lake or something, and a victim on fire running out of the mouth of Castle Skull along some battlements to die. I keep expecting a werewolf to show up.

But in spite of that it feels like he's not using this for its full comic potential. It's like he's just done a really good job of describing the prompt for a hilarious Halloween farce episode of Poirot but forgotten to write any jokes,and yet it doesn't exactly feel like he's taking it seriously either. It's not Del Toro, it's more like a nature documentary describing the events of a Gothic tale... except now that I say that, that sounds funnier than this book too. I'm entertained, but all the humor is in the incongruity. You have to find it yourself, as it were.

Anyway, I'm sure fanfiction could do better. Maybe not actually Poirot fanfiction, though, going by its record, but fandom in general, definitely.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Sounds amazing!

And the guy running out on fire -- Peter Jackson must have read that IRT Denethor. AIEEE.

[cimorene]

That's a good point! I wonder if he did or if there's something else they're both referencing!

[stranger]

I've been sorting and reading samples from my collection of mysteries, now arranged alphabetically by author. Margery Allingham, I am dismayed to realize of such a cherished author, started by creating a cardboard knock-off of Lord Peter Wimsey for her Campion. There are 15 or 20 books after that, and later ones develop the character, as indeed, Lord Peter himself changed over DLS's oeuvre. It's still kind of interesting and kind of shocking to see so obvious an example of genre troping.

[cimorene]

I read the entire first book and then I failed out of I think two more, including ones that were recommended to me as among the best. I just couldn't stick the writing at all - whereas I'm fairly used to fanfiction. But yes, some are more obvious than others! Philo Vance, for example, even though he's American.