Colour Scheme, Died in the Wool, Final Curtain (Three book reviews)

 

Ngaio Marsh Colour Scheme (1943) Alleyn is still in New Zealand, seconded there to help with counter-espionage. Setting: a spa/hotel near the NZ coast, run by a gormless English family. Victim: a guest who has lent  them money. Suspects: an English actor stranded in NZ, several members of the family, a couple of Maoris. Solution: a spy who was sussed by the victim. The puzzle depends on colour blindness, hence the title.
     Marsh is more ingenious than usual at placing red herrings, and as good as ever at social comedy and satire. Her portrait of the Great Actor is just this side of malicious. The clash of gentility with business sense  is satirised perhaps too gently. The love affair between the actor’s aide and the daughter of the house is nicely handled: Marsh has learned something about writing romances. The overall effect is that of a well-constructed play made into a novel. The characters are the types of social comedy or drawing room drama, but not mere cardboard cutouts. Pretty good, and a treat for Marsh fans. **½

Ngaio Marsh Died in the Wool (1945) Another punning title: the victim is packed up in a bale of wool. She’s a politician, one of those take-charge women who does a lot of good work on behalf of other people, who are not always happy to receive her benefactions, especially when she demands proofs of appropriately scaled, ie excessive, gratitude. She’s on a counter-espionage committee, too, hence Alleyn’s involvement.
     Alleyn must navigate not only the usual mess of confusing and muddling information, but also the effects of the victim’s personality on her family and the workers, with whom she has rather feudal relationship. This delays the revelation of crucial bits of information. One of the problems of writing mystery novels is manage that delay without it being too obviously a plot-stretching ploy. Marsh’s skill at character drawing, depicting relationships, revealing people’s history with its hurts and joys, complicates the story just enough to engage the reader without arousing impatience.
     The murder is discovered in a wool warehouse several weeks after it was done. There’s almost no physical evidence on the crime scene for Alleyn to sift. He must solve the crime by understanding the victim’s character, and how she was perceived and understood by all those around her. People have a natural tendency to both improve the character of a dead person, and to gloss over or hide anything that they feel is irrelevant, especially if it casts a less than perfect light on themselves. They also have differing recollections of the same events. Alleyn’s identification of  the murderer relies on the gaps and inconsistencies in the composite portrait and story. The puzzle’s solutions depends on timing, and the use of a radio to establish an alibi. Nicely done. ***

Ngaio Marsh Final Curtain (1947) While anticipating Alleyn’s return from New Zealand, Troy is asked, nay commanded, to paint the portrait of an aging Great Actor, a portrait that he will leave to the Nation. His family’s dysfunctional, and he’s done nothing to avert or dampen the rivalries that animate the siblings’ relationships with each other. He foments and aggravates the tensions and anxieties, by indulging in his rage and by ominous references to changes in his Will. There’s a brief allusion to Lear and his three daughters, but here the sisters vie for the children’s rightful places and fortunes. The Great Actor has taken up with a chorus girl of surpassing beauty and not quite surpassing vulgarity, and proposes to marry her. This triggers his murder.
     The plot is beautifully constructed in two parts: Troy’s stay at Ancreton, the feudal seat, and Alleyn’s investigation of the murder. Once again, the murder investigation starts long after its occurrence. Alleyn and his crew have precious little to go on, but dead men do tell tales about the manner of their demise, and this, combined with Alleyn’s ability to get people to tell their stories, provides the solution. The relationship between Troy and Alleyn deepens. ***½

Overture to Death & Death at the Bar (2 book reviews)

Ngaio Marsh Overture to Death (1939) Set-up: a village in which two aging spinsters compete for the Vicar’s attentions, while interfering in everybody else’s life. Murder: at the beginning of an amateur play, produced as a fund-raiser for the parish’s youth group, when one of them is shot by a pistol connected to the soft-pedal of the piano on which she will play the “overture”. Denouement: psychologically based, far-fetched by current standards because it involves Freudian repressions and such. Characters: believable enough as stereotypes, used by Marsh to make sometimes cutting observations about religion, charity, hypocrisy, naivete, and so on. One of her sharper satires. The novel reminds me of a drawing room comedy written as social critique, a genre very popular in the 1930s (see Noel Coward’s plays). The  “modern” play is chosen against the wishes of the spinsters. Detection: focus primarily on Alleyn and Fox, with a letter to Troy inserted to keep that back-story going. Overall effect: another good Marsh, who in my opinion is under-rated by detection story fans that concentrate too much on the puzzle. **½

Ngaio Marsh Death at the Bar (1939) The title is a rather lame pun: A lawyer is murdered in the
private bar of the pub in a small fishing village. The puzzle is more intricate than usual, and the characters are as nicely done as ever. This is Marsh as professional crime writer: the book is strictly formula, well-done, with enough incidental detail to provide the pleasures of living in a familiar fictional world. I’m not much of a puzzle solver when I read detective fiction, so the feel of the imagined world is important to me. I like Marsh’s version of English village life, and I like Alleyn, despite his sometimes irritating facetiousness. Or maybe because of it. There’s also enough contemporary detail to give us something of the feel of the times, such as a left-wing association  with an endearingly irrelevant run of Marxist jargon. **½

Wolfbane (Book Review)

F Pohl & C Kornbluth Wolfbane (1959) A wandering planet, home to mysterious Pyramids,  has taken Earth and its moon in tow, turning the moon into a fusion-powered mini-sun. They’ve been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years; Earth is their current (and last) victim.
     Earth’s inhabitants (at least the ones we meet) are a sorry lot, devoted to elaborate rituals designed to maintain as undisturbing a milieu as possible. Those that don’t fit in are called “Wolf”, and killed when caught. Glenn Tripole is a Wolf. He escapes by sudden Translation, a method used by the Pyramids to “harvest Components” for the bio-mechanically controlled factories and computers on their planet. Eventually, while part of an 8-person entity wired together to control the production of foodstuffs (for the Pyramids are themselves bio-mechanical), Glenn wakes up and begins a revolution. The Pyramids are destroyed, and the book ends with Glenn heading off to be rewired into a multi-person entity, which will control the path of the Planet and Earth.
     Pohl and Kornbluth posit that when calories fall below a certain level, society regresses to the “minor arts”. The society described by them recalls Western stereotypes of Japanese courtesy: over-elaborate, designed to hide embarrassing or disruptive feelings, and to make even conflicts seem as harmonious as possible. P&K are very good at presenting a society merely by describing such interactions, and the characters’ smug assurance that they are being perfectly civilised. No further explanations or descriptions are needed.
     But P&K’s depiction of the Pyramids is more impressive, I think. They manage to make us feel that these entities are non-human. When we discover that they are in fact machines, it’s something of a let-down. But the writers must (of course) show that humans (especially the anti-social minority of humans that they call Wolves) can win against anything the Universe throws at them. P&K are what I call Romantic libertarians, the kind that have not understood that a Libertarian polity would be nightmare of oppression.
     The most difficult task of an SF writer is to invent the Alien: by definition, we cannot think like an alien, so the problem becomes that of showing enough of an imagined alien life-from that we see it as alien. The Star Trek/Star Wars style of aliens as humans in funny costumes doesn’t work. (Star Trek does posit that the various races are all descended from bits of DNA planted billions of years ago by an intelligent species that found itself alone in the universe. Thus, the biological and psychological similarities between Humans, Klingons, Romulans, etc, are explained). In this book, too, a biological alien appears, as a corpse whose mind has somehow been kept functioning by the Pyramids, who were built by this alien’s ancestors. It is non-human in looks, but very human in psychology: it can even mind-meld with the 8-fold entity of which Tripole is a part.
     A short book, with a lot of intriguing ideas, better rounded characters than most SF, and well plotted. The showdown between the humans and the Pyramids is a bit too Hollywood, but it fits, which is more than can be said of many supposedly more realistic fictions. **½

Artists in Crime & Death in a White Tie (2 Book Reviews)

Ngaio Marsh Artists in Crime (1937. The book in which Alleyn meets the painter Agatha Troy. They first meet on a ship leaving Suva, when Alleyn is returning from his convalescent excursion to New Zealand (Vintage Murder). From here on in, most of the Alleyn novels advance their story. Marsh was one of the first novelists to frame her puzzles in an ongoing saga of her hero’s personal life. The murder is especially nasty, the solution to the puzzle depends on careful analysis of times and distances, and of course Fox and the crew do their stuff with admirable professionalism. Marsh is a master of suggesting the tediousness of police routine without actually describing it in any detail.
     Marsh is clearly confident about her market now. The book has more scope than the first three or four, Marsh uses the background (an artist’s workshop run by Troy) as an occasion for acute comments on art, creativity, and the public image of artist as outsider. She clearly had artist friends and acquaintances; her views (such as can be inferred) feel supported by careful thought.
     I’m on a Marsh binge, and am reading a book every two days or so. So far, I don’t feel glutted. ***

     Ngaio Marsh Death in a White Tie (1938) Marsh set this story in Alleyn’s milieu of gentry and
aristocracy. It’s the Season, and Lord Robert Gospell (Bunchy), a good friend of Alleyn’s, has been asked to keep his eyes and ears open for information about a blackmailer. He’s murdered, but Alleyn and Fox manage to wind up the case in just over two days (and by foregoing sleep). Since many of the cast are Alleyn’s friends and acquaintances, we get Marsh’s take on this stratum of society, and she has some mild satirical fun with them. In some ways, the murder investigation is merely a prop to hang the story on.
     Agatha Troy is also present, playing a minor role as friend and confidante of one of the blackmail victims, and Marsh advances the Alleyn-Troy love story to the point where they declare their love for each other. Marsh may have decided to involve Alleyn in love and eventually marriage because Sayers had safely married off Wimsey the year before and had a great success with Busman’s Honeymoon. The courtship sounds somewhat stilted: Marsh was not a writer of Romances. In fact, Alleyn alludes to such “false novels” when he refers to their meeting on board ship at Suva (Artists in Crime). Her portrayal of Alleyn and Troy as a married couple in the later novels is more successful.
     One of the pleasures of Marsh’s books is her characters. She of course trades in stereotypes, as all writers of entertainment fiction must do, but she varies them enough, and uses Alleyn as a commentator on them well enough, that they seem, for the brief hour that they strut and fret upon the stage, to be real people. Another winner, even if the Troy-Alleyn love story feels a bit grafted on. ***

The Case is Closed (Book Review)

     Patricia Wentworth The Case is Closed (1937) “A Miss Silver Mystery”.Wentworth was at one time mentioned in the same breath as Christie, Marsh, and Sayers, but she doesn’t really belong with them, if this book is typical. It’s a romance, of the type that came into its own in the 1950s and 60s and made the fortune of Harlequin Publishing. The crime plot adds a fillip if danger and propels the story, but the real focus is on Hilary Carew and her  wish to patch up her quarrel with Henry Cunningham, heir to his uncle’s antique shop, and the strong and usually fairly silent type. What these two have to settle is of course who will be boss, an issue that hasn’t gone away despite our modern, enlightened ways. In the end of course they “belong”, as Henry puts it, and we know that they will have a grand time married to each other and sparring about whose turn it is to do the dishes.
     The story’s told almost entirely from Hilary’s point of view, and a right little blighter she is. She’s a good deal smarter than she knows, she talks herself into whatever attitude will justify what she wants to do, she can react smartly, she notices odd behaviours that suggest sinister motives, all which make her a determined and moderately adequate sleuth. But she’s also naive, which endangers her life. Of course Henry (and Miss Silver) rescue her just as the murderer is about to stab her.
     Hilary has attitudes rather than opinions. We see three couples, and we see Hilary realising that what she has with Henry is better than what other people have. This is of course a common misapprehension (why do we assume that other people aren’t as clever,  enlightened, and mature as ourselves?) The other two women gain a measure of happiness, but any reader who has identified with Hilary will share her relief at being reunited with Henry, this time for always.
     A good read if you’re in the mood for romantic fluff with a dash of crime. **

Malice in Miniature (Book Review)

     Jeanne M. Dams Malice in Miniature (1998) “A Dorothy Martin Mystery”. Dorothy is a 60-ish American lately married to a Chief Constable. Presumably the backstory was provided in the earlier books. Her part-time gardener, a lush, is accused of stealing miniatures, but that’s put right. Nevertheless, Dorothy wants to know what’s really going on at Brocklesby Hall, which houses a museum of dollhouses, their cranky owner, and miscellaneous staff. Two rather unpleasant people are murdered, and Dorothy (rather implausibly IMO) gets to help with the investigation.  She’s nearly murdered in her turn, but her husband arrives in the nick of time to save her. He later announces that he will fully support any future sleuthing. End of fantasy.
     Light fluff, just right for occasional summer reading, but not a series I’ll be looking for. **

Vintage Murder (Book Review)

Ngaio Marsh Vintage Murder (1937) The manager of a theatre group on tour in New Zealand dies when a celebratory jeroboam of champagne drops at high speed and smashes his skull instead of floating gently down into the greenery decorating the party table. Alleyn’s on holiday, and lets himself be dragged into the case. The murder is prompted by that most common of motives, money. Rivalries and other relationships muddy the trail, but paradoxically it’s a character’s attempt to divert attention from another (actually innocent) one that at first stymies the police and then provides the clue that unravels the killer’s plans.
     The colonials are a little too deferential and eager to have Alleyn’s help, I think, but otherwise the book shows the steady increase in Marsh’s mastery of the novel. The characters, the local colour, the plotting are all more interrelated than in the earlier books. The resolution rings true to character, even if the puzzle is trickier than a real life one. I don’t read mysteries in order to spot the perpetrator before the detective Reveals All; a good deal of my pleasure comes from the aura of realism. This time it’s enhanced by Marsh’s intimate knowledge of the theatre as trade, craft, and profession. Recommended. ***

Death in Ecstasy (Book Review)

Ngaio Marsh Death in Ecstasy (1935) #4 in the Alleyn series. A Chosen Vessel dies of cyanide poisoning during her first Communion at the Temple of the Sacred Flame. Suspects:  the presiding priest and six Initiates. The complications: jealousy among the females for the priest’s attentions (Being Chosen comes with sexual services), a lot of money, stolen bearer bonds, and drug trafficking. Nigel happens to be present at the murder because he noticed the Temple’s sign from his window, was bored, and went to investigate. A neat puzzle, whose solution turns on psychology: people have trouble controlling their speech when agitated. The murderer spent much of his life in Australia, poses as an American, but lets slip the occasional Oz expression.
     The book shows Marsh’s increasing interest in social comedy. “New Age” religions have been around a long, long time. Marsh has a good eye for the kind of people they attract. She doesn’t feel especially kindly towards them, though, and there’s no doubt she intensely dislikes the practitioners who prey on the weaknesses and doubts of the gullible. Alleyn’s facetiousness has been toned down somewhat; Nigel and Angela are once again roped into a bit of teckery; and Fox’s character has been augmented. The friendship between Alleyn and him goes deep. We will see more of it in future books.
     My copy was given to me by my Aunt. It’s a Penguin, printed in 1941 on very thin newsprint that’s begun to yellow in the gutters, no doubt a reaction with the glue. On the last page we read a request to deposit the book in any Post Office, for the enjoyment of the men and women in the Services. It has a tea stain on the front. The back cover is an advert for Pears soap, which cost 6d, or about 12 cents, at the time. That’s a lot of money in 1941. The inflation calculator says it’s $1.78 today, but in terms of average income it’s about $6. See:
http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/relativevalue.php
     I enjoyed the book. ***

The Nursing Home Murder (Book Review)

Warning: Spoilers!

Ngaio Marsh The Nursing Home Murder (1935) The third Alleyn mystery, and Marsh has mastered novel writing. Alleyn has lost some of his facetiousness, Fox has become the sidekick and sounding board, Bathgate and Angela have been demoted to “bright young things” as hangers on. Alleyn gives them the job of finding out a few facts about anarchists (the Red Scare was current at the time the novel was written). The victim, O’Callaghan,  was a cabinet Secretary about to introduce a Bill limiting civil freedoms as applied to Communists and such. This is one of the confounding factors, another is a cast-off mistress, who is loved by the surgeon who must operate on O’Callaghan’s inflamed appendix.
     As you can see, the plot is tricky, the murder less so. Marsh provides all the clues, even the unnoticed injection puncture at the hairline of the victim, referred as a possibility by the pathologist. The murderer is a eugenics fanatic with a Saviour complex, a bit thin, but the puzzle requires some such far fetched motive. The writing is much better. The characterisation is much indebted to theatrical types; I get the impression that Marsh was as much casting a play as writing a novel. No matter, it’s good entertainment. **½

Direct Descent (Book Review)

     Frank Herbert Direct Descent (1980) Yes, it’s that Frank Herbert: Author of Dune, as the cover reminds us. Part 1 was published in Astounding Science Fiction as “Pack Rat Planet” in 1954. Internal evidence suggests that Part 2 ("Direct Descent") was written around the same time. Both are classic mid-20th century SF tales, with hints of advanced technologies, sardonic humour, serious exploration of the social implications of technical and political change, and adequate characterisation, in all of which Herbert excelled. Here, Earth has become a hollowed core of its former self and houses the Galactic Library, a vast archive of text and artifacts recording the history of humankind. “Gravitics” maintain gravity despite Earth’s vastly reduced mass. Rhomboid boxes display “realised images” of distant persons or scenes, but Herbert (wisely) says nothing about how it’s done.
     Both tales are in of the victorious underdog genre. In Part 1, a fascist oppressive regime takes over and wants to destroy the Library. By doing exactly what they are told to do, the Librarians wreck the scheme. When the broadcasts of material stop as ordered, the rest of the galaxy turns on the new government and ousts the Leader. In Part 2, a band of cost cutters who want to eliminate the “inefficient” Library is stymied when the Free Islanders, who are entitled to miscellaneous periodic payments, and on whose maintenance about 60% 0f the budget is spent, demand that the accumulated debt be paid. The ruler of the Island assumes governorship of Earth, which also helps.
     An entertaining and nostalgic read. Illustrations extend the page count, but are uncredited. **½

Enter A Murderer (Book Review)

     Ngaio Marsh Enter a Murderer (1935) The second Alleyn book. At the Unicorn theatre,
professional and personal jealousies, skeletons in various closets, and sheer nastiness lead to murder. Nigel Bathgate (whom Alleyn inexplicably allows to act as his amanuensis) has invited Alleyn to accompany him to the play, so they both witness the murder. Bathgate  is Marsh’s attempt to give Alleyn a sidekick like Holmes’s Watson or Poirot’s Hastings. It works in that it adds another point of view and opportunities for more red herrings, both of which help solve the structural problem of a puzzle story: how to keep the reader interested in the plot.
     Alleyn here is still a parody of Wimsey and other gentleman detectives. Later on, he has more gravitas, but his habit of quoting Shakespeare and other poets, as well as his tendency for zen-like pronouncements  will remain. The novel’s heavy on dialogue, and includes some neat but mild satire of the actors. A good entertainment in the classic English puzzle-plot mode. It even includes a reconstruction of the crime, during which the murderer reveals himself (of course). Even in this journeyman excursion, Marsh was showing herself to be a master of the form. **½

The Fifteenth Century (Book Review)

     Margaret Aston The Fifteenth Century (1968) A survey of the century that not only moved European civilisation from the Middle Ages to the Renascence but invented the concepts. A well illustrated overview, with enough casual detail to bring the period to life, the book reminds us that much of what we consider the modern way of living was invented 500 years ago. Technology has changed, but our attitudes towards the past, the present, and the new were first expressed back then. By the 1700s, these attitudes were already deeply ingrained enough to attract criticism from satirists such as Jonathan Swift, who mocked uncritical acclaim and enthusiasm for whatever was new and different in his A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travels. On the other hand, the realisation that human reason and imagination were capable of not merely changing but actually improving human life dates from the early Renascence and led directly to the accelerating development of technology and scientific discovery that we now take for granted.
     More importantly, the notion that social arrangements and politics were not inevitable but could be altered to suit ourselves dates from this time, too. Machiavelli was vilified for his proposition that the Prince’s responsibility for the safety of the state overrode the laws of individual morality. But his actual legacy was the very idea of that responsibility. Prior to his book, the state was seen as the property of the Prince, for which he was responsible only to God. His book implies throughout that the Prince is responsible to the people to keep them safe, promote prosperity, and prevent conquest by enemies. By 1776, the Americans spoke about a King’s failures in his duties to his subjects as not merely a reason for rebellion, but as a mandate. People and rulers have a reciprocal responsibility to keep each other honest.
     These and other reflections may occur to the reader of this very handy book, which, as many such have done recently, both reminded me of what I had learned in school, and also corrected misperceptions and clarified vaguenesses. **½

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video review)

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981) The BBC video series. Based on clips and previews of the 2005 movie, I think this video is still the best realisation of Douglas Adams’ vision. I’d use the word “definitive” if it hadn’t been used by too many critics before me.
     I’ve seen this video at least half a dozen times, and  each time I enjoy it just as much as when I first saw it on TVO many years ago. The simple computer animations displayed by the Book may seem endearingly old-fashioned, but considering how much information it must include, it represents a brilliant solution to the problem of maximising data and minimising storage. Douglas Adams’ wit sounds fresh despite repetition. As any serious (as opposed to solemn) philosopher knows, comedy and satire can express truth and wisdom more economically than any other mode. That’s why philosophers and preachers hate comedians, and do their best to make us think that gloomy mien and furrowed brow are the only true signs of deep thought.
     By this time “42" as The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is so well known that the number alone serves as a signal. That the Earth is a computer is not merely Douglas Adams’ joke: that the Universe is a computer is a metaphysical theory taken seriously by a surprising number of mathematicians. I prefer to think of the Universe as a hologram, however. ****