Adrain Mourby. Whatever Happened to...? (1997)

     Adrain Mourby. Whatever Happened to...? (1997) Nicely done satire, using famous literary figures as speakers or subjects of reports. Mourby assumes 20th century sensibilities, and spins his sequels into absurd and sometimes all-too-plausible consequences. The report on Mr B. B. Wolf is priceless in its mealy-mouthed bureaucratic avoidance of the obvious. Snow White’s fate is clearly an attack on the Windsors’ use of Diana. Frankenstein shows Freud as an idiot, which he wasn’t, but too many of his followers were. Suppose Romeo survived and married Rosaline? Well, Rosaline tells us, and she is not a happy wife. Well done, but definitely for educated adults. *** (2008)

Margaret Doody Aristotle Detective (1978)

     Margaret Doody .Aristotle Detective (1978) Stephanos’s cousin Philemon, exiled for manslaughter in a bar fight, is accused of murdering neighbour Boutades. Desperate, Stephanos asks his former teacher Aristotle for help, and Aristotle eagerly jumps into detecting. The result is a fairly constructed puzzle and its solution, but for me the depiction of daily life in Athens was even more interesting. It’s one thing to read a history book, even one loaded with pictures, and quite another to read a well-imagined historical fiction. I could not detect any obvious anachronisms, the characters are believable, the settings even more so. Stephanos is the narrator, so our knowledge is as limited as his, but we also suffer with his sensitive nose, his vanity, his anxieties, and his sense of being burdened with duties as head of the family, both his and Philemon’s fathers having died before Stephanos could finish his studies with Aristotle.

     All in all, an entertaining read. The history is taught by the way, painlessly. One thing that’s clear is that what many nowadays think of as the Islamist segregation of women is an ancient East Mediterranean cultural value, and has nothing to do with religion. It predates Islam by thousands of years, a good example of how deeply ingrained values inform religions, which are far more malleable and flexible than the literalists imagine. We make our religion fit our prejudices, and thereby give them a spurious authority. **½

Two best sellers, and comment about gore-porn.

     Dan Brown. Deception Point (2001) Adolescent power-trip fantasy, larded with gee-whiz technologies, which all, according to a prefatory note, exist, plus dollops of gore porn, though not as nasty as some other authors indulge in. I stopped reading about one quarter of the way in, sampled a few passges later in the book, and conclude it would have been a much better one at one half its length. I suppose it’s “good of its kind”, but it’s an obnoxious kind. Zero

     Jeffery Deaver. The Vanished Man (2003) The conceit is that a serial killer used magic tricks to both perpetrate his murders and hide his tracks. The fist victim is done in by The Lazy Hangman, an escape trick. The cops not only found no trace of the killer, but what they thought was his hidey hole has no second exit. The janitor hasn’t seen anyone come or go in the last half hour. And so on. Pretty obvious killer, if you ask me, but I didn’t feel any need to discover his name, nor how many other victims he had on his list. The sleuth is a quadriplegic with a faithful retainer, consulted by the police when they can see no way ahead. The death scene signals a book indulging in the nastier kind of gore-porn, so I gave up on it. Zero.

     Best sellers and gore-porn. I first came across the nastier examples of this sub-genre of crime fiction in Patricia Cornwell’s books. I read a few of them because they’re well plotted, and Kate Scarpetta is a sympathetic character, the kind for whom we wish a good life and happy endings. But I eventually tired of the gore.
     Obvious question: why do so many best sellers these days indulge in extreme gore and violence, detailed descriptions of psychopathic torture, and the like? What is it about imagined nastiness that attracts so many readers? I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill horror, which leaves a good deal up to the reader’s imagination. I mean the clinically detailed descriptions of death-dealing, complete with the victim’s terror and pain. Why have gory death scenes become so common? It used to be a book had to have more-or-less explicit sex-fantasies, now it’s rather-more-than-less explicit murder fantasies. Something dark is at work here: I think it’s related to the free-floating anxiety about “them taking over”, which has been exacerbated since 9/11, and the paranoia that fuels so much politics.

Greg McDonell. The History of Canadian Railroads (1985)

     Greg McDonell. The History of Canadian Railroads (1985) An ambitious title for what is essentially a picture book. McDonell has assembled a good collection of illustrations, and as far as I can tell his text is accurate enough. A pleasant read, and a good introduction to the subject. At folio size, a bit large as a reference book. One irritating thing: many of the captions refer to parts of the picture that have been cropped off to make the picture fit or to emphasise the main subject. That is one of the hazards of off-shore editing and printing. ** (2008)

Klaus J. Vetter. Die Eisenbahn in Österreich (2007)

     Klaus J. Vetter.  Die Eisenbahn in Österreich (2007) My cousin sent me this for my birthday last January, I looked through it twice then, and now for the 3rd time. This time, I read more of the captions, and some of the text. Interesting tidbits that I didn’t know before, especially clarification of some of the locomotive classes, and a clearer account of the sequence of line construction. The book is clearly aimed at an audience outside Austria. My cousin included an errata list that he had made up, thus making the book more authoritative. Excellent photo reproduction, and clearly the older pictures have all been rescanned for this book. I’m glad to have it.
      Austrian locomotive design was idiosyncratic, to put it mildly, and the earlier examples often look ungainly, even ugly. Even the 310, reputed to be the masterwork of Austrian locomotive design, has unpleasant proportions, with a cab that’s too small, huge driving wheels, a stack that’s in the wrong place, and a smoke-box that’s too long. The 93 class (2-8-2T) is a better proportioned machine in my eyes. The 310 was very successful in purely engineering terms, but not aesthetically. The electrics were on the whole much better designed I think. *** (2008)

Ross MacDonald. The Instant Enemy (1968)

     Ross MacDonald. The Instant Enemy (1968) The Sebastians hire Lew Archer to find their runaway daughter. He does, and also finds a mess of murder, multiple marriages, fraud, and impersonation. Well done, even though the plot is more tangled than it needs to be, and MacDonald doesn’t play as fair as he usually does. **½ (2008)

W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web (1988)

    

 

W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web (1988) The twist in this tale is that the victim claimed to be pregnant when she wasn’t, just to see how people would react. One of the people she was testing reacted by killing her. Burley delivers his usual well crafted police procedural laced with his mildly ironic bemusement at the foibles of humankind. In many ways his light tone doesn’t carry the weight of his motifs. After all, a clever schoolgirl who finds humans interesting as specimens, and dies when she miscalculates, isn’t exactly comic fare. **½ (2008)