Random Thoughts

It’s not easy to find an Agatha Christie book to re-read — even though it’s been a couple decades since I read most of them, the plots of many of them are still pretty clear in my head. But then again, the most famous of them have been made into TV series, movies and radio plays, and so I’ve already experienced them many times.

But this one didn’t ring a bell, and it’s from 1939, so I went with it.

And it’s very entertaining. It’s got a satisfyingly large number of suspects, and we really get into the investigation — but without going over the same plot points again and again. It does get a bit bogged down in the third quarter, but then the ending’s totally mad, so that’s fun. (I did guess the murderer, but I’m guessing that’s because I’ve read this before, even if I didn’t remember anything else about it.)

Robert Barnard:

Archetypal Mayhem Parva story, with all the best ingredients: Cranford-style village with ‘about six women to every man’; doctors, lawyers, retired colonels and antique dealers; suspicions of black magic; and, as optional extra ingredient, a memorably awful press lord. And of course a generous allowance of sharp old spinsters. Shorter than most on detection, perhaps because the detection is, until the end, basically amateur. One of the classics.

Murder Is Easy (1939) by Agatha Christie (buy used, 3.77 on Goodreads)

About 20 years ago, I remembered that I’d quite liked Agatha Christie’s mysteries when I was a child, so I decided to read them all chronologically. Which took about ten years, since I only did so while either being hung over or having a cold or the like.

And then afterwards I watched the Joan Hickson Marple series, and then the David Suchet Poirot series (speaking of which — that one sure was fun for the first half, what with the amusing Scooby Gang of characters and stuff, but then they decided to get All Serious, and things totally went off the cliffs), and…

What I’m saying is that I wanted to re-read some Christie now, because I am once again under the weather, but it was hard to choose something I didn’t remember perfectly. But I couldn’t remember this one at all, which is either a good, or a bad sign.

It was a bad sign. I mean, it’s not awful or anything, but it’s Agatha Christie at her laziest: She came up with The Mystery, and then didn’t really bother to do anything more. Instead we have Marple being summoned on a woozy premise to a mansion, and as soon as she arrives, everybody swarms her, telling her all their business. Then there’s the murder, and then the rest is just the police investigating it, getting one witness statement after another until there’s a sufficient number of pages, and then a quick reveal.

Robert Barnard says:

Otherwise highly traditional, with houseplans, Marsh-y inquisitions, and second and third murders done most perfunctorily.” He summed it up as showing “Definite signs of decline.”

And while I didn’t think I remembered anything of the plot, as soon as the murder had been committed, I flipped back to the house plan, and said “well, obviously X did it”, which turned out to be correct. And I’m not smarter than Christie, so I must have remembered that part, even if I don’t remember remembering it.

This book has the third-lowest rating of the Marple books on Goodreads, so I guess my opinion here is decidedly mainstream. *pout*

Well, I still want to read another Christie book… but this time, perhaps from the 30s, and perhaps without either Marple or Poirot?

They Do It With Mirrors (1952) by Agatha Christie (buy used, 3.78 on Goodreads)

I’ve read this book before, and I know that I have it here somewhere, but I just can’t find it. So I downloaded an ebook from Anna’s Archive, which turned out to be a much better edition than most ebooks — few typos and almost no typographical errors.

The plot is totally preposterous, but this is one of those comedy mysteries, so that’s fine. The main point of the book is to cram as much bickering between two silent-era movie stars into the book as possible, and it achieves that magnificently.

So it’s fun, and it’s a bit odd that it’s impossible to buy an ebook of this legitimately. But I mean — it’s a trifle. And the mystery itself is *rolls eyes*.

This Goodreads review should win some sort of reward:

ALL BOOKS MUST HAVE ACCURATE DEPICTION OF JETLAG! EVERYBODY HAS JETLAG! IF YOU DON”T ACKNOWLEDGE THE JETLAG IN YOUR COMEDY MYSTERY, YOU HAVE FAILED!!1!!!ONE!

*slow clap*

Reel Murder (1987) by Marian Babson (buy used, 3.5 on Goodreads)

I started reading Iain M. Banks relatively late — I probably read my first one around 2010, and then gulped down a few until I realised they were a limited resource. (Him being dead and all.) So I’ve been portioning them out, and I’ve finally come to the final book (which I’ve had since 2013).

I mean, it’s rather stupid — I should just have read them all at the time, and then started re-reading instead of being miserly with them, right?

Because they’re so enjoyable books. So full of fun and science fictioney things. It’s not that they’re perfect — more than a couple of the Culture books are chock a block with the most mind-boggling stuff for like 400 pages, and then it’s like Banks went “OK, that’s enough” and then he wraps it up in 20 pages, usually with a literal deux ex machina, and you realise that nothing the protagonist(s) did for those 400 pages made any difference whatsoever.

And it would be one thing if that was, like, intentional, but it’s from sheer laziness on Banks’ part.

But! Those 400 pages are some of the most fun 400 pages possible, so, you know…

This final book here (final for me; it’s from 1993) is not a Culture book, so I guess we’ll see what we’ll see.

And… it starts off like total popcorn — fun, lots of action and repartee, and new mind-bogglingly science fictional concepts on every other page. And the plot is a favourite of many an sf writer: We have a hyper-competent scooby gang that’s going to find/steal a book so that they can find/steal the McGuffin.

But it just grows kinda… Uhm… OK: It’s basically three scenes on rotation. 1) First you have an action/heist/whatever scene, that’s very chaotic, rather puzzling (nothing much is explained), and lots of fun. 2) Then you have the characters talking to each other afterwards, and they explain what you’ve just read. 3) Flashbacks to traumatic/significant scenes in the character’s past. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. For 500 pages.

While 1) and 2) are lots of fun in and of themselves, and 3) isn’t bad either, it’s like we’re on an interminable treadmill.

That also goes with the puzzling shifts in levels of technology and competence — sometimes the characters are almost supernaturally able, and sometimes they’re bumbling around, all depending on what each scene needs.

So after 200 pages of this, I found that I was taking longer and longer pauses between picking up the book again after a break, which is never a good sign. But I persevered for 300 more pages, and… I think this must be Banks’s worst SF book? There’s a big mystery with a big reveal, but there’s really just one possible solution who The Big Bad Villain is, so as reveals go, it’s a bit of a thud. And the motivation behind it all? *rolls eyes*

Anyway. Now I wonder what other people think of this book…

It’s got a 4.1 rating on Goodreads, which means that it’s smack in the middle, ratings wise. It’s toward the bottom when it comes to how many ratings it has — only two books have fewer ratings. So it’s a well-enough-liked Banks book, but one that few people read.

The second highest rated review is this:

Which means that the people who disliked the book really disliked the book. Third highest is a three star one:

I see that my complaints aren’t very original:

So there you go. I wonder whether my disappointment with this book is mostly caused by how high expectations I had — I mean, it’s my final Iain M. Banks book, and while not perfect, perhaps it’s not as frustrating, really, as I found it. Dunno.

Against a Dark Background (1993) by Iain M. Banks (buy new, buy used, 4.1 on Goodreads)