A good old-fashioned murderbook

I have to admit that when I hear the word "academic" used with a negative connotation, it makes me feel a little downhearted. I get that not everyone enjoys school things, but I have always enjoyed school things and even when a subject seems narrow or uninteresting to me, I enjoy enough niche things to appreciate other people's interest. And then all my close college friends went to grad school (I think 50% of the people at my 21st birthday have now finished their PhDs), and my own department is so friendly that I've had remarkably little exposure to conniving, petty, self-important types. Plus, a lot of grad students develop awesome hobbies and side projects in grad school (not me, I'm lame). When I think "academics" I think adorably nerdy people who are about as intimidating as a muppet.

And when I think "academic books" my heart warms, because what is better than an academic book? Academic books have a clearly defined focus, they delve deeply into their subjects, and they provide you with all the information you need to judge them -- or if they don't, then there's your assessment right there. But I appreciate that for plenty of people none of this is true, and alas, "academic", which is a rather accurate descriptor for me, is not a positive for the general public.

All of this is a long lead-in to an excellent book that strikes a happy medium between academic and general interest. The University of Chicago Press has clearly pulled out the stops to make Blood Runs Green: The Murder that Transfixed Gilded Age Chicago accessible for the general book-reading public. It's very reasonably priced, for one thing, and has a catchy title. It has maps, illustrations, a cast of characters, and a glossary. There are no superscript footnotes, and the technical parts of the introduction (historiography, methodology) have been pulled out and placed in a separate section at the end. It starts with an attention-grabbing introduction and carries on from there. Very easy to read. At the same time, it's well researched and all those important citations are there as endnotes, formatted in a gratifyingly efficient way for those of us who like that kind of thing. Seriously, I hate endnotes but these are very easy to use.

The book itself, as the subtitle suggests, tells the story of a sensational murder that took place in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. It's very much a narratively-driven book: it introduces the players, describes the victim's disappearance, the discovery of the body, investigation, and trial, before concluding with some considerations about the legacy and impact of the case. Now, murders are fairly interesting in themselves, but this was a case of a member of a secret Irish republican society being bumped off by his rivals within the group, so the story encompasses terrorism and financial misdeeds as well as nationalism and racism. Oh! And also the interplay of the press and the justice system. There's a lot here, is what I'm saying, but it's all straightforward and readable. If you like historical murder things -- and I know you do -- you'll like this.

(PS. I am delighted to find I already have a tag for "murder".)

Adventures in "giallo" literature

I believe in getting to the airport early for an international flight, but for various reasons I was outrageously early for my flight out of Fiumicino, meaning that I got to investigate all the shops at my leisure (and my wallet's peril). This included a Feltrinelli's outlet -- the Waterstones or Barnes & Noble of Italy -- which had a single, but generous, table of books in Inglese. This is an interesting thing, the forty or so titles in English that make up the selection in an airport bookstore; what would you choose and/or expect? In this case, there were the usual sorts of things, I guess, the supernatural romances, the pinky-purple chick lit, the conspiracy thrillers, the award short-list titles; but also, and I thought this was a nice touch, a selection of novels with Italian connections, whether written by Italians or simply set in Italy. And among these was a detective novel translated from Italian which sounded pretty interesting, but I virtuously chose not to spend my money in such a fashion (and promptly went and spent four times as much-- look, I don't have to explain myself to you). Having arrived home, I tried asking google what that book was so I could look for it at the library, and google suggested the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri. Now, I think the Big G is wrong, I don't think Camilleri is the author I saw at the airport--

"Wish you had Glass now, eh?" - no, really no

--but Camilleri was readily available at the library and so I took out The Shape of Water, the first of this apparently much-loved series.

A man is found dead of a heart attack in his car, parked in an area notorious for prostitution. But of course, the dead man was a political heavyweight, this is Sicily, and it's a crime novel, so it's not so simple as all that.

"Wonderful, eh?"
"I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"It's wonderful, that is, that someone in this fine province of ours should decide to die a natural death and thereby set a good example. Don't you think? Another two or three deaths like Luparello's and we'll start catching up with the rest of Italy."

I found it interesting that the tagline on my edition is a novel of food, wine, and homicide in small-town Sicily, which makes it sound sort of travelogue-esque; plenty of murder mysteries trade on readers'/viewers' interest in the setting, serving up atmosphere along with a puzzle.* In fact, The Shape of Water is a fairly sordid little story of sex, politics, scandal, and death, and while food features from time to time, I wouldn't say it's particularly prominent. The tagline may be drawing on the series as a whole rather than this particular installment.

I didn't call the book "gritty" there because the writing seemed a little too spare for that particular adjective. The quotes on the back compare Camilleri to Hammett and Chandler, so I have a vague notion that this is a matter of style. It wasn't my favorite; in a couple of places it felt flat rather than taut or hard-bitten or whatever. Nevertheless, there were parts that stood out, including passages that were genuinely funny, which as we all know is not easy to do.

At the end of the book I discovered endnotes which explained some of the political references and undercurrents and gave rough dollar values for the lire quoted in the text -- these notes were minimal and genuinely useful, or would have been if there were any indication in the text that they existed! Seriously, no asterisks or anything. Hopefully that was corrected in later editions; pity the translator who went to the trouble of compiling them if not.

In sum, this book didn't totally win me over but then it didn't turn me off either. I have another volume in the series (not the second one, but a later one) and I'm still going to read that one too. I didn't see anything here that would make me particularly love this series the way that readers in other languages apparently do, but neither did I dislike the book. Certainly Sicily makes a unique environment for crime stories, and I thought it was handled really well; I mean, I don't know what would actually be "realistic" but this didn't feel didactic or exoticized. I suppose that's one value of reading a translated book.


* Has anyone else seen Endeavor? The second series just aired on PBS. I never liked Inspector Morse much (although Lewis I like), but Endeavor is pretty gorgeous.

Summertime, and the reading is series

I can't help it, I like a good series. I think I hinted at this, at least, in my Anne of Green Gables post; I have that sort of gotta catch em all compulsion when it comes to book series. (See also the Dragonriders of Pern books.) (Oh, Pern.) Here in adulthood (?) however, I have learned that it's okay to just move on and not finish the series if I feel like it. One advantage of this is that you don't get caught in an obsessive-compulsive reading cycle (always a plus); another that I've discovered recently is that it's really nice to come back to a series when you've been away. So here are three series I've picked back up in the last week or so.*

So, first up: the SPQR series by John Maddox Roberts. I read a couple of these on Kindle a few years ago and enjoyed them, and recently I saw fellow classics nerd and all-around cool person Meg was reading them, so off I went to the library. After a rather frustrating hunt through the forest of Nora Roberts books (I like to get my books off the shelves myself like an honest woman, but this experience convinced me of the superiority of placing holds), I grabbed volume 6 here, the library not owning 3-5.

These are such fun books. They manage to balance the conventions of detective stories with a historical setting that doesn't have detectives or modern policing in a way that's fun and effective and not at all tedious. There are some blatantly exposition-y passages but I didn't mind them; it's all directly related to the plot and it's ancient Rome so maybe I'm just more willing to give it a pass in general. The main character (and narrator) makes me laugh, he's such a perfect grouchy, cynical Roman.

More historical mystery: the Max Liebermann series was the first thing I wrote about on this blog! I see in that post I wrote:

I liked them, and would have kept going for probably another couple of books if this were 2014 and there were another couple of books in the series.

GUYS IT'S 2014 RIGHT NOW

I remember when I got to the end of the available books that the stories were starting to feel same-y, and I'm pleased to report that taking a couple of years off helps address that problem. Death and the Maiden has a high-level-government-conspiracy thing going on as well as a cameo by Mahler (admittedly easier to achieve when you're writing a novel) and the SVU-level psychoanalysis I noted in that first post. I didn't really follow the conspiracy plot very well, and I'm not sure that the book was all that successful on the whole, but I did like being back with the characters, so this series and I can part amicably until the next time I stumble across a new volume.

And finally, which it's only THE GREATEST SERIES OF ALL TIME. You and Dr. Huang can draw your own conclusions from the fact that I, the compulsive completist, stopped reading these two from the end expressly because I didn't want to be done with them. However, as I had picked up the above series I decided it was time to finally read the last two Aubrey/Maturin books. The Hundred Days was a nice reminder of how much I love these books, even if, in itself, I didn't think was the finest installment of the series. I have to go back to the library for Blue at the Mizzen, but in the meantime I'm re-reading Desolation Island which is one of the ones I own (the first couple chapters with Jack on land just kill me).

I suppose there's also the published chapters of 21, but I don't know how I feel about those. (Basically, they published what Patrick O'Brian had written of the latest book at the time of his death, if you don't know what I'm talking about.) But a few chapters, without an actual book, and without any sort of revisions, isn't all that appealing to me. I don't get much out of fragments. But then I'm sure my completist impulse will compel me to check them out anyway.

Proud to share reading tastes with Ron Swanson

I hope you're all feeling the joy of warmer weather; I've been reading outside quite a bit this long weekend, it's madness.



* Each of these books I read in about a day. I'm telling you, I'm having this crazy-awesome reading moment.

Mysteries and tote bags bring the drama

Republishing formerly-popular books seems to have become a Thing, and I am 110% on board with it (as you'll see from the many posts I make in the next few months about books like this). It's historically interesting to read something written in another era, and doubly so if the book was popular when first published; plus there's that added dash of intrigue if the book has since gone out of print.

And supposing we were to add foreignness to this already-irresistible equation? Ooh la la.

I bought The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume at Daunt Books, which is almost always included on lists of interesting London bookstores. Located in the rather trendy Marylebone area, it's old and gorgeous and so on -- I don't want to steal other people's pictures, but if you Google Image search it, you'll see what I mean.

Daunt totebags are very popular at the British Library. I like to imagine that the readers putting their things in the lockers are composing catty little monologues worthy of a fashion week runway show audience. What, did she buy that Daunt tote this morning? That's right, bitch, I bought mine in '95, get a good look. A British Library tote at the British Library? Well aren't you just a delicate creative soul. Ooh, the beach umbrella Strand tote - that's a bold choice. Personally, I carry the Pride & Prejudice tote from Out of Print, a Christmas gift from my BFF. Thank you Laura! I feel like I can hold my own amongst the lit types now.
 

Haters to the left.

Aside from being pretty and whatnot, Daunt bills itself as a "travel" bookshop, and probably 60-70% of the store is arranged by countries, with travel guides, maps, essay collections, and fiction shelved together. Yes, it's pretty darn cool, and it makes you want to read lots of things from countries you don't usually read things from. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is an 1886 Australian mystery novel set in Melbourne. Yes please.

The book is the sort of thing that makes me think, "ah, so this is why the Sherlock Holmes stories are such classics." It's not that it's bad, it's just that it's not particularly great. I know there's always a fair amount of angst about "the canon" and what gets called a classic and so, and certainly I'd never say that The Classics are the only books worth reading or anything like that -- if for no other reason than that people ought to read whatever they particularly like -- but at the same time, some books definitely stand the test of time better than others.

The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is one of those books that features a lot of Victorian angst. Why yes, I do have a good example:

But when Frettlby turned to go to the door, Madge, who had her eyes fixed on the doctor's face, saw how grave it was.
     "There is danger," she said, touching his arm as they paused, for a moment, at the door.
     "No! No!" he answered hastily.
     "Yes, there is," she persisted. "Tell me the worst, it is best for me to know."
     The doctor looked at her in some doubt for a few moments, and then placed his hand on her shoulder. "My dear young lady," he said gravely, "I will tell you what I have not dared to tell your father."
     "What?" she asked in a low voice, her face growing pale.
     "His heart is affected."
     "And there is great danger?"
     "Yes, great danger. In the event of any sudden shock--" he hesitated.
     "Yes -"
     "He would probably drop down dead."
     "God!"

BUM DUM DUM!!

The plot is plot is pretty contrived and the ending is fairly ridiculous -- moral of the story, kids: as long as secrets stay secret, everyone is much happier -- but it's entertaining enough. You know how people sometimes use the word "workmanlike" as kind of a diss for artistic things (I think they do anyway)? I kept thinking that the writing in this book was pretty workmanlike. The characters and the plot points clicked along but there wasn't an enormous amount of feeling to it. Lots of very convenient coincidences, people collapsing and throwing themselves at other peoples' feet as the story demands, that kind of thing. Again, it sort of shines a light on why, of all the Victorian detective fiction, Sherlock Holmes has endured. (Which reminds me that another curious feature of the story is that there are two detectives, one in the first and one in the second half of the case, and they aren't actually all that central. Is the star detective a development in the genre?)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I didn't buy it because I thought it was going to be the most thrilling mystery I'd ever read: I bought it because I was intrigued by its being Australian. For the most part the local color doesn't come in until the second half of the book, but it's there in spades. If nothing else, the solution to the mystery hinges on a contrast between the wild old days of the colony and the more respectable contemporary society. But there are little digressions that stress the "John Bull" character of the Australians and also discuss the backwardness of the weather and so on. And there's a foray (of course) into Melbourne's equivalent of Seven Dials:

If there is one thing which the Melbourne folk love more than another, it is music, their fondness for which is only equalled by their admiration for horse racing. Any street band which plays at all decently may be sure of a good audience, and a substantial remuneration for their playing. Some writer has described Melboune as Glasgow, with the sky of Alexandria, and certainly the beautiful climate of Australia, so Italian in its brightness, must have a great effect on the nature of such an adaptable race as the Anglo-Saxon.
     In spite of the dismal prognostications of Marcus Clarke regarding the future Australian, which he describes as being 'a tall, coarse, strong-jawed, greedy, pushing, talented man, excelling in swimming and horsemanship,' it is more likely that he will be a cultured, indolent individual, with an intense appreciation of the arts and sciences, and a dislike to hard work and utilitarian principles. Climatic influence should be taken into account with regard to the future Australian, and our posterity will be no more like us than the luxurious Venetians resembled their hardy forefathers, who first started to build on those lonely sandy islands of the Adriatic.
     This was the conclusion Mr Calton arrived at as he followed his guide through the crowded streets, and saw with what deep interest the crowd listened to the rhythmic strains of Strauss and the sparkling melodies of Offenbach. The brilliantly lit street, with the never ceasing stream of people pouring along; the shrill cries of the street Arabs, the rattle of vehicles, and the fitful strains of music, all made up a scene which fascinated him, and he could have gone on wandering all night, watching the myriad phases of human character constantly passing beneath his eyes.

I am assuming that this book has featured in some kind of academic work, although my quick JSTOR search didn't turn anything up.

Anyway, on the whole, even though I did not discover a new favorite piece of fiction, this book was quite entertaining, intentionally and unintentionally.

I apologize for this post in advance

It's odd when you think you've gone into something with no expectations, only to find that your expectations were basically correct. I feel like that sentence doesn't make any sense, but let's just keep moving. I've got a backlog of posts to write, and if I don't keep going I'll just get overwhelmed.

For once Google fails to turn up my edition, but this is close

I bought this on a whim at a charity shop for 75p (if only all my whims were 75p): a well-worn paperback that's clearly been sold at least two or three times before. "PD James," I thought. "She's a famous lady." That PD James is a woman is the only thing I knew about her. If you had pressed me to articulate some of the other associations I had I would say murder mysteries and high church Christianity. Both of which are in evidence here.

The story has to do with an adopted girl, Philippa, who finds out her birth parents committed a horrific crime, and a man who is seeking revenge for that crime. I thought the story was compact and compelling; and the writing was just right for the story. Philippa's coldness and heartlessness was an interesting character choice for a protagonist. The various secrets are revealed in good time, and there is an epilogue to give you an idea of what the characters do after the main story has played out. The biographical note highlight's James' career in various bureaucratic roles, and her understanding of (and opinions on) the law and British social services really added a lot. I was also pleasantly surprised to find the story playing out in some familiar parts of London. Overall, it was a really satisfying, good book.

Mostly what I learned here was the difference between a "crime" novel and a "mystery" novel. Unsurprisingly, the crime novel deals with a crime as it is planned and carried out (I surmise), whereas the mystery novel deals with a mystery being investigated and unraveled. Shocking, I know; I guess I'd never really thought about there being a difference.

This post feels really leaden, so here's the first picture that came up when I searched for Innocent Blood:

Whatever this is, it didn't happen in this book.

I liked this book, I really did, and if I were in a used bookstore looking for something interesting to read I would totally buy another PD James book. And yet somehow this book was so exactly as good as I thought it would be, and so many of her books sound exactly like the kind of thing I'd like, that I feel somehow less compelled to go out and read them. It's like, eHarmony would totally match us up, but I'm not feeling the chemistry right now. It's not the books, it's me. I just have some things to work through right now, I guess, and even though I really thought I was ready for this, and we've had such a good time, and you're so great, seriously, I just don't feel like I have the energy to put into this right now. I'm so sorry. Maybe someday, like in a couple of months, if we're both still available...?

Can you tell it's late here? I think it's going to be a late start for me tomorrow.

Some light holiday reading

The best used bookstore I know of in my parents' hometown is Goodwill; one of the locations even has a little coffeeshop attached, and if you buy a book you get $1 off pastries. Not bad, not bad.

I picked this title up for a mere 79 cents the other day -- from the clearance rack at Goodwill. That bodes well, right?

"Whodunnit" is right up there with "cyber" on my list of words I hate

But! I am pleased to report that this was a good buy. The book contains a variety of short mystery stories featuring detectives in different periods of history. Many of the stories are republished from Ellery Queen but a few were written for this anthology. As the cover suggests, some of the sleuths are the stars of series, so if you like their stories this collection can be a jumping-off point. To this end, there's a little bibliography suggesting specific books according to their setting. The editor has obviously put a lot of work in and these aren't just public-domain stories collected up to make a quick buck. The bibliography and the introductions to each story make it clear that there is a real human opinion at work behind the selections, which I think makes the whole thing more enjoyable.

Unsurprisingly, given my well-known Roman history obsession, I liked the story starring Decius Metellus best, and I want to read one of the full-length books at some point, whenever I get time. I was really surprised by the number of different time periods represented though. So far I've read stories set in ancient Egypt, Golden Age Athens, republican Rome, imperial Rome, Justinian Byzantium, ancient China, and early medieval Ireland. Some are, I think, a little more "historical" than others, in that some stories seem more interested in exploring the limitations and methods of pre-modern "investigation" than others, which more or less transpose the standard format. It's interesting to see how different authors set about their stories, and the beauty of short stories is that you're never far off from something different.

I'm still plugging away at The Two Towers but this book makes for nice vacation reading. It's like that tray of cookies you can't stop nibbling at, even though you know you ought to be eating up the leftovers from your Christmas party's raw veggie tray.

Spinsters getting things done

Agatha Christie's The Murder in the Vicarage was free for Kindle, so of course I snapped it up. Of course it was good. Liking an Agatha Christie mystery is like, I don't know, enjoying a symphony by Beethoven or admitting that the French make some pretty decent wine. I liked that the story was told from the first-person perspective of one of the by-stander characters; that was pretty neat. Also, sunsets are profoundly beautiful.

Agatha Christie novels seem like classic old-lady reading, which, I admit, is kind of a barrier for me, although I also avoid books that are very popular currently. I will need to get over that because Miss Marple is a very enjoyable character. Of course she's a kind of soul sister to Dorothy Sayers' Miss Climpson, another spinster using her snooping powers for good. And I suspect I'm drawn to both of them through my childhood love of Nancy Drew -- another series I burned through as quickly as possible. Sure, Nancy had Bess and Ned and her father (Mr. Drew, Esq.?), but for the most part her investigating activities were powered by her own snooping.

Miss Climpson, if you're wondering, first appears in Unnatural Death; another notable spinster of the Wimsey series is Miss Murchison, who appears in Strong Poison.

Of course (setting aside Nancy Drew, Yank of the first order) both Climpson and Marple also belong to a very particular moment in the history of women, and specifically of single women. The late Victorian and Edwardian period had seen the rise of professional women asserting their right to support themselves, often through serving the professional needs of other women. Although many scholars argue that the rise of Freudian theories, which cast suspicion on single women as "repressed" (see: Gaudy Night), put an end to this flowering of independent single women, the situation between the wars was still very significant. After all, it was widely believed that the slaughter of the First World War must leave many women single who would otherwise have gotten married. And, let's don't forget, women in Britain got the vote in two stages: in 1918 women who might be qualified as "older" or more stable received the vote, and in 1928 women got the vote on the same basis as men.

All of which is to say that in the 1920s and 1930s when Christie and Sayers were writing the characters of Marple and Climpson, respectively, we have a society that was thinking about the contributions women on their own could make to society, and had been thinking about this for some time. Of course this isn't all rosy. Both Marple and Climpson are obviously "marginal"; they're almost constantly being insulted directly or indirectly. Their detective activities are an outlet of useful activity in lives that would otherwise, by implication, be pretty useless. But I still think they're interesting characters that point up a contemporary interest in spinsters, and a wider sense that women were becoming important (somehow).

Setting the historical interest aside, I've always liked characters who use their Special Expertise to solve a problem. Maybe that's why I like mysteries so much: because I'm just waiting for the situation in which my knowing what guttae are or how to format a bibliographic entry in Chicago style makes me the hero.

This series may possibly be set in Vienna

There I was at Open Books, looking for Dorothy Sayers. Disappointed that all the Wimsey books in stock were ones I'd already read (I'm dangerously close to having drawn that well dry), I let my eyes wander over the Mystery section, when A Death in Vienna, shelved under T for Tallis, Frank, caught my eye. I read the back. It was set in 1902. It sounded okay. So I bought it. This is the least thought I have put into selecting a book in a very long time. And it pretty much paid off.

There are five books so far in the series: A Death in Vienna, Vienna Blood, Fatal Lies, Vienna Secrets, and Vienna Twilight, and thanks to the Chicago Public Library I have now read all of them, in order. Thank you to the good citizens of Chicago for not impeding me in this because it really messes me up when I can't read things in order. I liked them, and would have kept going for probably another couple of books if this were 2014 and there were another couple of books in the series. I like them. I feel the need to repeat that because now I might end up writing some things that might sound slightly insulting.

There are two main characters, Max Liebermann (a psychologist and devotee of Freud's new-fangled theories) and Oskar Rheinhardt (a police detective with an admirable love of cake). Tallis strikes a nice balance with these two; they work together well, each in his own sphere. It's easy to have characters who seem to do nothing but solve mysteries, and I think one of the big strengths of the books is that Tallis really succeeds in anchoring the events of the stories in the flow of the normal passage of time and normal lives. Not that I don't usually overlook the mystery-story cliche of a small village with regular, frequent violent deaths. Furthermore, there's plenty of love and family dynamics and so even though every case seems to involve a serial killer, the books as a whole are well rounded out.

Liebermann and Rheinhardt like to play music together, and also get together in cafes to drink coffee and eat pastries, both of which activities are described in loving detail. I see on Amazon that some reviewers (not the mob, I'm talking about the short professional blurbs) draw a straight line between Liebermann and Rheinhardt and Aubrey and Maturin, which I think is unwarranted. As a devoted reader of Patrick O'Brian's superlative seafaring series, I don't think it's fair to accuse Tallis of too much borrowing. The music-playing makes ample sense within the setting, as does the friendship dynamic, so I think it all stands on its merits.

Incidentally, I'm fairly sure that Tallis just sidesteps the whole "origins" problem by just asserting in the first book that they're friends and have worked together before.

I say: well done, Frank Tallis. I suppose some people would cry laziness or bad form, but I'm perfectly happy just to get on with things without some kind of awkward shoehorning-in of backstory.

The mysteries themselves are okay; lots of blood and gore and complex solutions. Tallis has two central gimmicks (not used in a pejorative sense) in his series. First, the historical setting and particularly Liebermann's Jewish heritage within that setting. This aspect is okay, but starting to get a little creaky toward the end of the series-so-far.

Second is the psychoanalysis, which is fascinating for a totally different reason than the author (must) intend. Liebermann's contribution to the investigations is his application of Freud's hot-off-the-pen theories - Freud is actually a character in the books, and Liebermann often meets with him to discuss interpretations. Tallis himself is described in his author bio as "a practicing clinical psychologist and an expert in obsessional states." And yet! None of Max/Tallis/Freud's insights seem terribly surprising to this veteran of Law and Order: SVU. I'm going to take Tallis' intelligence and authority at face value, leaving only the following possible conclusions:

1. Freud's theories have really permeated our modern consciousness, to the degree that even I am aware of them.

2. Tallis underestimates the psychoanalytical training his readers (I) have had from the eminent Doctor Huang and his colleagues at NYPD's SVU.

3. There really is only so much that can be said about murderous sexual perversion.

And on that hopeful note I shall leave you.