Tag: detective stories

‘A Serial Poisoner Stalks Broken Hill’ (2015)

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The nooze is getting me down, I can hardly bear to cover it.

And so, for the time being, turn we unto murder mysteries–stories about crimes that get solved instead of just sucking whole countries into their depths.

The Bachelors of Broken Hill, an Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte mystery by Arthur Upfield–this is one of the best detective novels you’ll ever read.

A Serial Poisoner Stalks Broken Hill

No matter how fiendishly clever the crime, “Bony” will always solve it. No matter how big the crime, the perps won’t get away with it.

I know, I know–now it sounds like fantasy. Well, so what? Go ahead–just try to convince me that multitudes of anti-heroes in “I give up, everything’s so awful!” stories have done anybody any good–let alone the country. Prayer and faith are what it takes to help us back to a belief in ordinary goodness, decency, and sanity. But a little dab of fantasy doesn’t hurt.

 

Book Review: ‘Murder Must Advertise’

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This is as good a time as any to catch up on one’s reading. And if you like murder mysteries, you’ll probably love Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers, featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. He goes undercover in an advertising agency, posing as a junior copywriter as he tries to solve the crime.

To show you how much writers know, Dorothy Sayers considered this gem “not one of my better efforts.” We beg to differ.

The only problem with this story is that the background setting, the advertising agency, is more fascinating than the murder. I kept finding myself forgetting there was a murder to be solved, I was so intrigued by the actions and interactions in the agency. Sayers actually worked for an advertising agency for almost ten years, so she was writing about something she knew intimately. All these captivating characters! I could hardly wait to see what each of them would do next.

Advertising copywriters try to persuade people to buy things they may not really want, and do things that they may not want to do. Sort of like politics. How they go about it is an absorbing study in itself. It was so interesting, I didn’t want the book to end. Murder, schmurder–how do you get people to buy and smoke those not-really-all-that-good cigarettes?

I do love a good detective story, and the Wimsey series is classic, top of the line. As an interesting side note, Margery Allingham created her own aristocratic detective, Albert Campion, as a parody of Wimsey. Her books turned out to be so popular that they kept her busy writing them for many years. I like them almost as much as I like the Wimseys.

Books like these make time pass unnoticed, and pleasurably. It’s why they’re still popular today. If you need a nice distraction, you can’t do better than Murder Must Advertise.

‘Miss Marple Comes to Life’ (2016)

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What a thought this was–a detective who can’t shoot a gun, can’t survive a fistfight, and can’t even run away. What could be more original than that? A little old lady who lives in a village!

Miss Marple Comes to Life

Joan Hickson was Agatha Christie’s choice to play Miss Marple, and didn’t get to do so until she was as old as Miss Marple. The result was well worth waiting for.

Forget about any other Marples. These are the best.

‘In Praise of Miss Marple’ (2016)

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She manages to see and hear everything…

The more I think of it, the more the idea grows on me: a seven-foot tall Manchurian detective who solves crimes by dipping specially treated bacon strips into the suspects’ drinks…

Nah. Miss Marple’s better. Miss Marple is the best.

In Praise of Miss Marple

It’s Labor Day. Maybe we’ll watch a Miss Marple episode. I mean, of course, the ones starring Joan Hickson. None of the others can compare.

Another Rotten Remake: ‘Sleuth,’ 2007

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Stay away from this one, boys and girls.

Sleuth in 1972 was one of the hit movies of the year, featuring an incredible cat-and-mouse game between an aging, fabulously wealthy and successful mystery novelist (Lawrence Olivier) and his wife’s young lover (Michael Caine).

But the 2007 remake, starring Michael Caine as the writer and Jude Law as the lover, directed by Kenneth Branagh with a screenplay perpetrated by Harold Pinter, stinks on toast.

It’s mostly Pinter’s fault. His dreary, existentialist worldview has inspired him to write a lot of plays about dreary, existentialist people, and this one is about the dreariest of the lot. All the fun provided by the original has been removed, to be replaced by f-bombs and not-so-sly homosexual hints. Watching this movie is only slightly more fun than eating newspapers soaked in dishwater.

The slow pace of this movie makes it seem much longer than it is, which is more than long enough. They should’ve called it Sloth instead of Sleuth.

Well, it does go to show you how much has changed from 1972 to 2007–everything, in fact, except Harold Pinter, who is still a pill. If you’re ever stuck with a party you want to poop, send for Harold.

The original was witty, full of surprises, full of really interesting observations on the whole genre of detective stories, and, above all, fun. All of this has been dropped from the remake. The two characters–the only two in the story, in fact–are obnoxious, potty-mouthed bores. Certainly not what we expect from Branagh and Caine.

The only thing that could’ve saved this movie was an attack by a giant chameleon, which of course was not on the cards.

But I’ll say this for it. If you can’t figure out what’s wrong with the age we’re living in, the remake of Sleuth will probably clear that up for you.