Aftermath all over again: Robinson's Friend of the Devil

Peter Robinson. Friend of the Devil (2007) Some years after the serial killings related in Aftermath, the murder of a disabled woman reopens that case. The aftermath continues. Annie Cabbot has been seconded to the neighbouring police district, so it’s her case. Meanwhile, a gruesome rape and murder in Eastvale occupies Banks. The two cases converge (of course), and end successfully, if revelation of the perpetrators can be considered a success. The costs of that success are, as usual with Robinson, appalling.
     I read this book over about a week, which tells you that either Robinson’s page-turning plotting isn’t working as well, or that I’ve become jaded. Or both. This book was adapted for one of the TV series episodes, so it felt vaguely familiar, but I watched the video too long ago to compare it to the book. For Robinson fans, another satisfying read, for other crime fiction fans not the best introduction. **½

Academic Exercises: Short stories

 

 Glimmer Train #47 (2003) A journal of short stories founded Linda Swanson-Davies and her sister, Susan Burmeister-Brown, appearing from 1990 to 2011. I can’t recall how I came by this copy. I didn’t read all the stories, though I sampled every one. The author bios almost all mention a BFA or similar academic qualifications, which makes it a sample of what University writing programs produce. My take: Interesting, but by and large too self-consciously “engaged” with whatever theses the authors could derive from their tales. Carefully constructed, they attempt to give meaning to the lives of ordinary people caught in the web of ordinary life.
     But too often, you see the cogs being carefully assembled into a gear-train, and the crank beginning to churn the contraption. Too often, I didn’t want to know more about the characters than the first few paragraphs told me. Too often, the near total avoidance of plot (ie, of the intersection between a character’s decisions and the random events that make up reality) meant I didn’t want to know what happened next, let alone how the characters coped with it. For even if life is a tale told by an idiot, the sound and fury do signify.
     The first story The Accident, or the Embrace is one of two stories that took me into their world. Beginning with an accident in which a boy loses his leg, it ends with a discreet menage a trois (so discreet, it’s unclear if the husband knows he’s part of it). Midnight Bowling is told by a girl who manages to escape her mother’s plans for a religious life with her new man (married, hence adulterous, but a self-proclaimed Christian). She hides her intentions from her mother, and hides a good deal of what she know or suspects from the reader, who must tease together the few bits of the puzzle that suggest what’s missing from explicit telling.
     The collection’s interesting as much for what it reveals about the esthetic and craft standards of academic writing programs as for the tales themselves. I felt the writers knew what they wanted to achieve, but didn’t know why it might be worth achieving. Entertainment? Demonstration of narrative skill? Revelation of some overlooked aspect of being human? I can’t tell. They wrote good stories, but not memorable ones. **

Deceptions: Christie'sTaken At The Flood

 

Agatha Christie. Taken at the Flood (1948) In postwar England, the Cloade clan dislikes the widow of their rich relative Gordon, whose death in the Blitz deprives them of the money they had come to expect. A stranger appears with news of Robert Underhay, the widow’s first husband, supposedly still alive after all. Which would make her marriage to Gordon invalid, and so relieve the Cloades of their financial difficulties. The stranger turns up dead with a nasty bash to the back of the head. Poirot’s involved because Mrs Philip Cloade had asked him to find Underhay a week or so prior to the murder. 

     The usual complications ensue, and we are treated to nicely done puzzle but an uncharacteristically muddled narrative. The novel I think began as a romance about a returning WREN and her stodgy suitor, etc. The murder puzzle had to be solved somehow, the Inspector charged with the inquiry could have done it all, but I suppose Christie knew that inserting Poirot would satisfy her fans. So that’s what she did. Or so it seems to me. 

     The 2006 TV adaptation with David Suchet as Poirot offers a more coherent and nuanced tale. A couple of major differences reshape the plot so that it flows more naturally from the characters’ passions and flaws. Poirot is presented as the godparent of a major player. A couple of major plot points are completely changed, for the better I think. At any rate, I reread the book after watching the show, which paid more attention to the widening stain of evil, and how fate is the name we give to accident and coincidence. ** for the book, *** for the video.

     The book cover above will make sense only if you read the book.

Sam Elliot, bashful cowboy: Conagher (1991)

 

 Conagher (1991) [D: Reynaldo Villalobos. Sam Elliot, Katherine Ross, Barry Corbin.] Based on the novel by Louis L’Amour. Rustlers, a cattle baron, a homesteader who dies in an accident on his way to town, a bashful lonesome cowboy, a lonesome widow and her two lonesome kids, questions of loyalty and integrity, a stage line establishing its route through the district, and of course the laconic dialogue that marks the Western as a man’s man type of movie. But this is really High Romance. Elliot plays the knight in tarnished armour, Ross is the Lady in need of rescue, and it all plays out with a minimum of gore and a maximum of historical realism. Good movie. Available on YouTube. ***

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Flatmates, lies, and murder: Christie's Third Girl

 

Agatha Christie. Third Girl. (1966) A girl shows up at Poirot’s flat asking for help. She believes she has committed a murder. But she rejects his help when she sees him, exclaiming that he’s too old. Thus begins an extremely tangled web of deceit, misinformation, misremembrances, disguises, dead ends, and a dysfunctional family’s history. A couple of lucky discoveries enable Poirot to fit the pieces together into a pattern that makes sense, and all’s well that ends well. The girl even gets a very suitable young man. The plot almost slips away from Christie this time, but she manages to pull off a convincing denouement. Her skill at writing dialogue has improved enormously compared to her first books, in which it is often difficult to keep track of the speakers.
     This novel was made into a video in 2008 (season 11 of the Poirot TV series). The movie is much simplified, with fewer characters and a less tangled plot. The essential deceptions still operate, and the girl also gets a most suitable young man. But having reread the novel, I think it’s a more satisfying mystery than the video. Not to say that the video is a failure. The video will no doubt please those who know Poirot with David Suchet playing the role as only he can. It pleased me, for taken on its own terms, it’s an average Poirot movie, which means it’s pretty good.
     Book ***, video **½

Two By Robinson: Serial killings and a cold case.

 

Peter Robinson. Aftermath (2001) Banks is leading a joint task force trying to find a serial killer. It wears him out. The case is solved, but its effects spread like a stain through the community, among the police, among the families and neighbours of the victims, in the community at large. But the killings had their origin in horrific abuse within two related families many years earlier. The title is thematic.
     The backstory proceeds: Sandra is pregnant with her lover’s child and wants Banks to finally get on with the divorce. Annie Cabot decides that their affair should stop, but wants a continued collegial connection. Banks needs a holiday: that’s where The Summer that Never Was begins.
     Another good read by Robinson, but I felt somewhat detached from the story, perhaps because the plot was too obviously constructed to demonstrate the unknowns about serial killing. There was also a touch too much gore. **½

 The Summer that Never Was (2003) Banks is on leave enjoying a holiday in Greece after his leadership of a serial killer case left him exhausted. Reading the week-old English morning paper, he notices a story that revives a cold case: one of his childhood friends disappeared twenty-some years ago, and now his body has been discovered. Banks decides to offer what he recalls of that time, but also (of course) hangs around the investigation’s periphery, and uncovers not only evidence that he didn’t really know the boy, but also of corrupt social and political leaders and bent cops.
     Another well-done police procedural. Robinson is good at creating the ambience of long stretches of more or less futile lines of inquiry that eventually sift the essential information from the confusing detritus. Banks is left with the satisfaction of a case solved, and the loss of misleading memories of childhood innocence. The writing is merely workmanlike for too much of the book, but Banks and the other characters stick with you. ***