A subgenre which hasn't aged well
11 Apr 2023 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneAnother one of these midcentury detective novels that turn out to be premised largely on the evil of marijuana. I guess this is probably a whole phenomenom from this era, but it definitely took me by surprise.
The first one of these I read was one of Nicholas Blake's, which is to say, Cecil Day-Lewis's, called The Abominable Snowman, and it centered on an evil drug pusher who originally hung around outside boarding schools to give free blunts to children in order to get them addicted so that he could later get them onto cocaine, which somehow required an elaborate medical practice as front (but if the medicine front worked so well why did he spend time outside schools?).
This one I've just read from 1945 by Edmund Crispin - the pseudonym of composer Bruce Montgomery, but he doesn't have a son who's a famous actor, unlike Day-Lewis - has Nazi spies who um, got into satanism and the Black Mass as well simply... because they're both evil things to do apparently? And then also gave free pot to a teenager just for... fun...? When the detective realizes this he sends her off to a hospital to detox from the horrible ravages of pot. The guilty title in this case is Holy Disorders.
Looking at these descriptions now, the second one looks sillier, but taken as a whole, the first one actually had a much lower credibility quotient, while the startling revelations in Holy Disorders are mostly revealed near the end. Not that I would recommend either book, but it's a shame, because the beginning of Holy Disorders was really funny. I'm a fan of Crispin's style (I'm still going to make a post about him later). Not so much of Blake's (Day-Lewis's); I read three of his books to give him a fair chance, but they're generally kind of annoying.
The first one of these I read was one of Nicholas Blake's, which is to say, Cecil Day-Lewis's, called The Abominable Snowman, and it centered on an evil drug pusher who originally hung around outside boarding schools to give free blunts to children in order to get them addicted so that he could later get them onto cocaine, which somehow required an elaborate medical practice as front (but if the medicine front worked so well why did he spend time outside schools?).
This one I've just read from 1945 by Edmund Crispin - the pseudonym of composer Bruce Montgomery, but he doesn't have a son who's a famous actor, unlike Day-Lewis - has Nazi spies who um, got into satanism and the Black Mass as well simply... because they're both evil things to do apparently? And then also gave free pot to a teenager just for... fun...? When the detective realizes this he sends her off to a hospital to detox from the horrible ravages of pot. The guilty title in this case is Holy Disorders.
Looking at these descriptions now, the second one looks sillier, but taken as a whole, the first one actually had a much lower credibility quotient, while the startling revelations in Holy Disorders are mostly revealed near the end. Not that I would recommend either book, but it's a shame, because the beginning of Holy Disorders was really funny. I'm a fan of Crispin's style (I'm still going to make a post about him later). Not so much of Blake's (Day-Lewis's); I read three of his books to give him a fair chance, but they're generally kind of annoying.
