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| An insanely complicated plot! I don’t think I can face another book from this author. |
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| Pacific salmon: a gift from Miriam in Seattle. I love salmon. |
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| Miriam’s salmon with potatoes and salad. |
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| Photo from Miriam in Seattle. Wish I had been there too. |
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| Salmon at Alice’s house. |
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| Len’s freshly baked bread |
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| A chopped liver and corned beef sandwich in Southfield, MI last week. |
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| Creepy country house in 1925. Helena Bonham Carter. Agatha Christie. New Netflick…Just wow! |
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| E.C.R. Lorac’s novel offers us another aristocratic family down on their luck, living in the ruins of their family manor. Suspense! Murder! More Wow! |
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| The Poet X — a poor high-school girl trying to become a poet. Couldn’t be more different from stories of the English aristocracy! |
Barbecue Take-Out for Dinner |
| Barbecue from Satchel’s: chicken, beef, coleslaw, salads, cornbread. |
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| Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Reminds me a lot of James Joyce (not just because it’s Irish). Very good book, but too short. Shortlisted, too. |
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| Raven Black by Ann Cleeves. Lots of good characters! Good book but too long, gets kind of lost in the misdirections. |
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| The Shortest Way to Hades by Sarah Caudwell. Unfortunately a very discursive and frustrating book to read. It would be a good plot — almost a locked room situation — except for excessive detail about legal matters and TOO LONG! |
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| New York Times reaction, similar to mine: civility but Vance lied a lot in a very smooth, even unctuous way. |
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| One rainy afternoon we watched The Wizard of Oz. The four stars’ dancing on the Yellow Brick Road is unbelievable, no matter how many times I see it. |
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| Here’s a very retro element of the novel: the detective drives a Hispano-Suiza, and one of the characters drives a yellow Daimler. They chase around New York City. |
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| I was reading The Greene Murder Case in a coffee shop! Just for a change of scene. |
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| A PBS Masterpiece Mystery: Magpie Murders (from 2022) Two interlocking mysteries become strangely unified! Really entertaining. |
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| Police Inspector Peter Diamond detects in Peter Lovesy’s novel Bloodhounds. Notable: a mystery-reading society debates a vast list of classic crime fiction. Then the crimes begin! Which member pulled off this locked room mystery? |
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Three novels by Icelandic Noir author Lilja Sigarðardóttir in one volume. I’ve read the first one, Snare, and it’s good. The focus is on the criminals. I’ll be reading more. |
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| An early dystopian novel by Colson Whitehead: Zone One. I’m still trying to get into this one, but it puts me to sleep. Too bad, I liked Whitehead’s more recent books. |
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| A fascinating essay by Japanese writer Tanizaki: In Praise of Shadows (1933). |
“I always think how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art—would they not have suited our national temper better than they do?” (In Praise of Shadows, p. 52)
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| Amusing and ostentatiously philosophical, food historian Massimo Montanari presents A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce. I’ll have more to say about this one! |
“In reality, products … never work by themselves. Cooking mixes them and puts them into play, making them interact. Basil is exquisite, but nobody eats basil by itself. Chili peppers are exquisite, but nobody eats just chili peppers. Pasta is exquisite, but nobody eats pasta without sauce. To be sure, cooking starts with ingredients but, above all, it relies on recipes. … Even the most autochthonous recipes, the ones based on ‘local’ products, are never so completely local as to exclude contributions from diverse origins.” (Montanari, p. 13)
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| A preachy warning? Literary Theory for Robots |
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| Two Oz books, reviewed here: Wandering around in the Land of Oz |
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| A book and a film, reviewed here: Reading and Watching |
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| A book full of intriguing ideas, reviewed here: Algorithmic! Watch out: I have another post coming about this book. |
“Mrs. Crowl surveyed Denzil Cantercot so stonily and cut him his beef so savagely that he said grace when the dinner was over. Peter fed his metaphysical genius on tomatoes. He was tolerant enough to allow his family to follow their Fads; but no savory smells ever tempted him to be false to his vegetable loves. Besides, meat might have reminded him too much of his work. There is nothing like leather, but Bow beefsteaks occasionally come very near it.” (p. 34)
“Denzil Cantercot sat in his fur overcoat at the open window, looking at the landscape in water colors. He smoked an after-dinner cigarette, and spoke of the Beautiful. Crowl was with him. They were in the first floor front, Crowl's bedroom, which, from its view of the Mile End Road, was livelier than the parlor with its outlook on the backyard. Mrs. Crowl was an anti-tobacconist as regards the best bedroom; but Peter did not like to put the poet or his cigarette out. He felt there was something in common between smoke and poetry, over and above their being both Fads.” (p. 47)
“Mrs. Drabdump shrank from accepting Wimp's attentions, not so much perhaps because he was a man as because he was a gentleman. Mrs. Drabdump liked to see the fine folks keep their place, and not contaminate their skirts by contact with the lower castes. ‘It's set wet, it'll rain right into the new year,’ she announced. ‘And they say a bad beginnin' makes a worse endin'.’ Mrs. Drabdump was one of those persons who give you the idea that they just missed being born barometers. …Haunted rooms—or rooms that ought to be haunted if the ghosts of those murdered in them had any self-respect—are supposed to fetch a lower rent in the market.” (p. 53)
Slowly, you learn a lot of things about the people who had associated with the murder victim, but it feels as if no one is getting closer to envisioning how the murder was done or who had done it. Eventually, there’s an arrest and a trial and a surprise ending, but I won’t say any more than that.
Mystery reading this week: The puzzle of Blackstone Lodge by Martin Edwards, first published 2022. Set in the 1930s, this book is crammed with culture and drama — food, wine, fashionable and not fashionable clothing, motor cars, household situations, complicated relationships, unexplained disappearances, and murders of course. It’s a good mystery, more or less in the style of the well-known writers of that era: I’m thinking Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie. Like the locked room mysteries of early mystery writers, it’s very complex, with many characters, constantly shifting motives, and vast numbers of clues. The most amazing portrayal is that of a spiritual medium who possesses highly effective methods of seemingly offering contact with the dead to bereaved customers — and charging them very high prices. The gradual revelation of the reality of this character and the discovery of how she is able to be such an effective medium is masterful.
Finally after several murders and much effort to find the murderers and their motives, there’s a very long denouement in a very unusual setting. Finally, in this scene and one more conversation, the author reveals the perpetrators — both suspected and unsuspected. The young woman amateur detective, Rachel Savernake, masterminds the entire final revelation. Although the novel is complex — even over-complex and maybe a bit too long — it’s a readable tale, and it amuses me that the author, writing in the present time, the 2020s, returned to so many classic mystery novel conventions.
“Jacob reclined on the settee in the sitting room of Gaunt House. Nell Fagan’s death had ruined his day, but a glass of Château Pavie 1921 provided a touch of solace. He was no wine buff, but it was the most stunning Bordeaux he’d ever tasted. … Jacob washed down Hetty’s shepherd’s pie with more than his fair share of the Château Pavie.” (p. 186-189)
Ah, yes, the pleasure of visiting a grand household that hasn’t lost its money in the Depression. I don’t know what the wine was worth then, but I’m sure it was expensive. (The bottle depicted here is available, believe it or not, for around $3500, though it may have lost some of its flavor in the past century or so.)
UPDATE: in response to comments — to repeat, the price of a surviving bottle of the 1921 vintage TODAY is very high, but that wouldn’t have been the price in the 1930s when the book is set. Today a recent vintage is around $400.
Quite a few scenes of food and drink contribute to the atmosphere of this novel, and I always love to see how the author employs food details as a way to enhance atmosphere and character development.
In sum: I found this to be a good read, even if very complicated and drawn-out. Above all, I am highly impressed at the vast number of loose ends that are explained in the final chapters.
Review © 2023 mae sander
"This was all before Osamu Dazai wrote his work Setting Sun, about the decline of the aristocratic class after the war, so we did not yet have ready terms like 'the sunset clan' or 'sunset class' to describe these people, newly bereft of their noble privilege and falling into ruin. But, if we had, then I think it likely that this case would have been the first to see the term used." (The Devil’s Flute Murders, p. 17).
"Travelling was a still a hardship in the autumn of 1947. Even getting a train ticket was no mean feat. Luckily, Kindaichi’s connections with the police simplified that issue, but since the trains tended to be packed with black marketeers and their buyers, they were not places where public displays of police presence were welcome, and his connections did not go as far as securing him a proper seat. So now, Kindaichi found himself squeezed into this sardine-can of a train car looking like a crumpled handkerchief and gasping for breath." (p. 141).
As Kindaichi's search for needed answers to more and more questions about the past of the family, he uncovers more and more unsavory details that have created their murderous present-day situation. It's a suspenseful book, and interesting also because he finds them so revolting, and because the final explanation is, of course, quite surprising.
In the detective novel The Honjin Murders the author, Seishi Yokomizo, describes a murder involving the last generation of the landowner family named Ichiyanagi. In reading the novel, besides the fascination with a really good locked room story, I especially enjoyed the many details about Japanese life before the upheavals of World War II changed everything. Here is the author’s introduction to the family:
“According to the village elders, the wealthy Ichiyanagi family wasn’t originally from O—village at all, but from the neighbouring town of K—. This automatically made them unpopular among the narrow-minded villagers…. However, when the shogun was overthrown, and the imperial system was reinstated in the late 1860s, the family head realized that he was about to lose the honjin. He had the foresight to act before the old feudal system collapsed completely and moved his family to their current location. He was able to take advantage of the turmoil of the time and acquire farmland dirt cheap, instantly becoming a rich landowner. That was why the local folk liked to call the Ichiyanagi family a bunch of upstart kappa, mythical water goblins. This word was a local term of abuse for people who moved from K—town to O—village.” (The Honjin Murders p. 18)
The water goblins called kappa are fascinating. Several years ago I did a bit of exploring about this folkloric tradition, and since I am currently thinking a lot about Japanese culture, here’s a repeat of the blog post I did at that time.
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| Netsuke of a seated Kappa, signed Hokushō or Kitamasa. Late 1700s. (British Museum) |
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| Kappamaki -- cucumber sushi rolls. I generally prefer my sushi to have more fillings than just cucumbers. |
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| "Illustrated Guide to 12 types of Kappa," Japan, mid-19th century. (Wikipedia) |
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| Ryunosuke Akutagawa's "Kappa," cover illustration by the author. |
"'Quorax' is only a meaningless interjection like 'Oh.' But it was the name of a political party whose primary concern was supposed to be the promotion of the welfare of the kappa race.
"'The Quorax Party is under the control of Loppé,' said Gael. 'As you know, he is a famoous kappa statesman. Bismarck said that honesty is the best diplomacy, but Loppé is honest not only in his diplomacy but also in his management of home affairs.....'"
"'But that speech of Loppé's --'
"'Come now, just listen. That speech of his is of course a lie, every bit of it. But as everybody knows that it is a lie, it is an honest speech after all, isn't it? No one but you and your countrymen will call it a lie simply because it is a lie. We kappas do not -- well, it doesn't matter.'" (p. 70)Other kappa behavior and attitudes were just as unlike human behavior and attitudes as this. Unlike human behavior? Well, sometimes too much like human behavior, just different in detail. Akutagawa creates an imaginary kappa world that remains pretty intriguing nearly a century later, though I would not say the story is completely successful as satire -- I'm not sure why. Maybe it cuts too close to the bone.
In the first chapter of The Honjin Murders by Japanese author Seishi Yokomizo, published 1946, the fictitious narrator says:
"The locked room murder mystery—a genre that any self-respecting detective novelist will attempt at some point in his or her career. The murder takes place in a room with no apparent way for the killer to enter or exit. ... As a writer of detective novels myself, I intended one day to try my hand at one of these, and now I’ve been unexpectedly blessed—one has fallen right into my lap. I know it’s shocking but I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to the killer for devising such a fiendish method to stab this man and woman. When I first heard the story, I immediately racked my brain to think of any similar cases among all the novels I’ve read. The first that came to mind were Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room and Maurice Leblanc’s The Teeth of the Tiger; then there’s The Canary Murder Case and The Kennel Murder Case, both by S.S. Van Dine; and finally, Dickson Carr’s The Plague Court Murders." (p. 10).
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| The Mystery of the Yellow Room Serialized in French in 1907. Published in book form, 1908. I read it this week. |
"Yes," said the young reporter …, "The Yellow Room was as tightly shut as an iron safe."
"That," I said, "is why this mystery is the most surprising I know. Edgar Allan Poe, in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' invented nothing like it. The place of that crime was sufficiently closed to prevent the escape of a man; but there was that window through which the monkey, the perpetrator of the murder, could slip away! But here, there can be no question of an opening of any sort.” (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, p. 42)
Although I didn't enjoy it, I'm glad to finally have read this highly admired classic! And I now have a rather intriguing reading list of more locked room mysteries to read.
Review © 2023 mae sander.
"Now come on. Sit down. I'm going to tell you a story. It's about Pooh who was a little bear, and Christopher Robin who was a little boy. And Piglet who was a little [pause] piglet. ... One day when Pooh Bear had nothing else to do, he thought he would do something, so he went round to Piglet's house to see what Piglet was doing...."
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| Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne (1882-1956) |
The Red House Mystery was published in 1922, and has gone through numerous editions. It has every feature you could expect in a mystery involving the monied classes in England at that time. The characters themselves frequently refer to the detecting powers of Holmes and Watson, but it really has a different feel than Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, which were still appearing at the time Milne wrote.
I suspect that The Red House Mystery may have been one of the first novels to incorporate a number of now-pretty-standard elements. After all, Agatha Christie's first detective story, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published only two years earlier, in 1920. And Dorothy Sayers' first detective story, Whose Body? appeared in 1923.
The setting is "The Red House," a perfect English country house, with "dining-room, library, hall, billiard-room and office rooms” (p. 67) on the first floor, bedrooms and bathrooms above, servants' quarters below, and extensive gardens and woodlands. A very pleasant-seeming house. As one character says:
“I don’t think I know any house where things are so comfortable. One’s room — the food — drinks — cigars — the way everything’s arranged: All that sort of thing. They look after you awfully well.” (p. 40).
Typically, the day begins with breakfast -- the expected English breakfast, as served by the maids and eaten by several guests staying in the house. Milne writes: "Let us have a look at them as they came down to that breakfast.... [One guest] inspected the dishes on the side-table, decided carefully on kedgeree, and got to work on it. He had passed on to a sausage by the time of the next arrival. ... [Another guest] greeted them and sat down to toast and tea. Breakfast was not his meal." (p. 8-9)
"I have got rather an uncanny habit of recording things unconsciously. You know that game where you look at a tray full of small objects for three minutes, and then turn away and try to make a list of them. It means a devil of a lot of concentration for the ordinary person, if he wants to get his list complete, but in some odd way I manage to do it without concentration at all. I mean that my eyes seem to do it without the brain consciously taking any part." (p. 49).
Of course he solves the mystery, the police having become useless: the ending is really pretty surprising. In short, it's a delightful read. I think it has some of the humor and spontaneity of my childhood favorite stories of Winnie the Pooh.
Review © 2021 mae sander.
