cimorene

I have read a few new golden age mysteries lately, on the basis of recommendations from a blog

viggorlijah sent the link to.

Ellery Queen, The Greek Coffin Mystery. I have been previously aware of the name (actually a pseud shared by two writers) and its period fame and not got around to trying one before. The fictional detective is named Ellery Queen and the mysteries themselves do not purport to be written in the first person, which is a weird combination of circumstances, but whatever. The mysteries were first published in America in the 1930s, and this is an early one, chosen on the basis of rec from the above-mentioned blog. I have read many more British golden age mysteries, because I don't like the "hard boiled" genre and I hate following cop characters, so while I can read mysteries where the detective is friends with and works with them, having the actual protagonist be one is a bit much. This isn't the first one I've given a chance, but it is rare. Anyway, as usual when I do, I hated it and will not be reading another of his books. I would give it 4/5 apart from the disqualifying ACAB content, but I must note that the other reviewer disparaged S.S. Van Dine's work as something like soulless and mechanical and held this guy up as a brilliant counter-example, but I don't think this book contained better character writing than Van Dine's first few books, and it was much less readable and the detective nearly a Vance-clone but less funny and likeable. Apart from ACAB, this book has a pretty intricate puzzle plot, which according to the reviewer is typical of early Queen books. That was fairly entertaining, and there is a wide cast of characters with distinct personalities. But there were all kinds of other problems besides the sympathetic portrayal of the police that got my back up: the traditional GAD (Golden Age Detective) pastede on romance would have annoyed me just by existing, but this one was more revolting because the male half of the sketch was a violent idiot who belonged in the trash; a da Vinci canvas is removed from the frame, rolled up and casually carried around by multiple characters; there's a side plot about the father-son relationship between the protagonist and his dad where his dad is an asshole and we're meant to find it heartwarming; there's a red herring making it seem like a sinister millionaire did it but he turns out to have been patriotically helping the police and he's meant to be a sympathetic ordinary guy even though he was going to try to con the V&A in order to secretly keep a stolen da Vinci rather than returning it to them. This whole 'yeah but I'm rich and I WANT the da Vinci' is supposed to just be like 'Oh well, lol, at least he wasn't a murderer' at the end. GUILLOTINE.

Leo Bruce, A Case for Three Detectives. This is a comedy/parody mystery in which the author's obvious copies of Lord Peter Wimsey, Poirot, and Father Brown all attempt (and fail) to solve the murder and then are shown up by his lower-class local bobby Sergeant Beef, who is written with phonetically-spelled British hick dialect. The quality of the parody portrayals of the other three detectives is... pretty good? It's way better than your average fanfiction pastiche, with some truly inspired moments, and the three-way interactions definitely rise to, like, a Saturday Night Live level. However, that's the gimmick and that's what the book is for; the solution where they are shown up um, doesn't work at all because the actual mechanisms by which they were all mistaken are universally things that would never trip up the sleuths in question. So it only works, in other words, if you're just there to chuckle along with the joke, and don't care about the actual mystery/puzzle/characterization level. (I need hardly say that the best works of comedy and parody work on BOTH levels and the logistics in-verse still all fit together. Can you imagine a Terry Pratchett novel where the entire denoument was just a giant plot hole?) I would give this 4.5/5 overall because of the aforementioned spots of brilliance in the parodies, but I will not read any more of this writer's work, since a carelessness with the plot working out is combined with a high risk of encountering phonetically-spelled hick dialect (I have extremely low tolerance for that).

Harriet Rutland, Knock, Murderer, Knock! One of three novels by a rare, long-lost GAD writer whom many aficionados put in the top tier of genre writers. And this book really is wonderful. It's full of witty and sardonic character portraits, a fully-drawn cast, and features a fairly intricate puzzle with a bunch of shining moments of meta. There are a few bumpy spots, and there's a pastede on romance of course, but it is her first novel. I wish somebody had said CONTENT WARNING: CHILD DEATH to me though. I also don't like, as a rule, repressed spinster did it. I mean, can a repressed spinster be a murderer? Yes, but come on, statistically it's about seventy times more likely to be a man, and that's doubly true for the - these are spoilers, mind - sex-shaming category of crime. However, 5/5, and I will definitely read her other two books.

Akimitsu Takagi, The Noh Mask Murder (trans. Jesse Kirkwood). I started this last night and then finished it in one sitting because I couldn't put it down, accidentally staying up three more hours. It was a fun time... but it ended like watching all the endings of Clue in a row. It felt like about seven times that a solution was presented, and then someone else stood up and said "wELL, ACTUALLY" and presented a different one. In spite of my long (but not particularly deep, it must be admitted) acquaintance with Japanese culture, I am completely unable to guess if this was intentional comedy. Probably? But then again maybe not??? Or maybe yes AND no???? I was favorably impressed by the cleverness of the puzzle construction. And overall, considering the era and the background, I was kind of braced for more sexist portrayals of women! They are not main characters, but they still are characters, at least. Mostly. There's some refrigeration happening, or a lot of it, I suppose, but there's also female characters taking an active role in moving a plot that ultimately is, I think, about women's victimization and exploitation and how their social position makes them vulnerable to this. I will probably read his other book that's been translated.