#bookbox

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…

Which is your favorite theme??

- I’d rather just stay in bed.

- I came. I saw. I left early.

- Is it time to go home yet?

- Love me enough to leave me alone.

- The best time to call me is don’t.

ok caveat that all agatha christie novels have like, a layer on which they're a mystery novel, and a layer on which they're very deliberate social commentary, which is really interesting to me but not necessarily 'good' let alone 'endorsed'

top 5:

murder on the orient express the reason everyone likes this one is because it's good evil under the sun i just think this is well done. classic, central example of the christie mystery structure and cast of characters, fun setting, fun writing, fun solution. a brief swerve toward goofy commentary on Teens, but i think it rescues it in the end. a mirror crack'd from side to side very fun marple. i really love miss marple which is kind of an unpopular opinion amongst christie fans, and i think she's shown off well here. not a perfect book but in practice i reread it often because i just really like the one-off characters and i think it's a fun example of the classic agatha christie The Solution Is The Personality move. sleeping murder more marple! fun mystery premise, enjoyable characters, well-written, not history's most difficult mystery to solve but a good enough time that i don't care. the hollow really fun interesting character work. obvious of me to love henrietta but i insist upon doing it anyway

[pause here for the best-worst superposition book, a murder is announced, which on the one hand is a clever, fun, entertaining book with a great setup and great use of miss marple and on the other hand is one of the cruellest, most needlessly antisemitic depictions of a holocaust survivor you could possibly imagine]

bottom 5:

every single thriller. this includes every tommy and tuppence novel. they're bad examples of an already bad genre. she just wasn't good at writing these and they're all very overwrought, very boring, and depict the least meaningful conception of Organized Crime possible elephants can remember just not good. this has maybe the most unbelievably obvious solution of any christie novel i've ever read, it's not otherwise particularly good on any axis, and the whole thing just feels like a plod toward the book finally agreeing to reveal the incredibly obvious twist. they do it with mirrors also reeeally obvious, at least if you've read a few christies before, and it's set in a school/rehab/asylum for Criminal Youths and therefore involves a lot of agatha christie explaining her understanding of the top criminal psych theories of 1952

the pale horse i just didn't like this one. she's going for an Atmosphere of the Supernatural, like in endless night (which i also dislike), and like in endless night, she does this mostly through invoking scary Romani rituals (not called that) and endless wibbling about OooOoh is MAGIC REAL???? but then it isn't. the revealed motive and method here are both much worse then in endless night, and so is the narrator, whom i dislike enormously.

so i actually have become desperately obsessed with old detective novels every january for the last five years or so for reasons that remain opaque to me. as such i have a giant list with much rereading but i can take you through some highlights. nearly all of these are british and most are pre-1960 or so.

2019ish i read every dorothy sayers novel in a frantic rush and got my vocal mannerisms stuck in "depressed effeminate 1920s aristocrat" for like a week. i reread these periodically so imagine them kind of sprinkled in recurring amongst all subsequent years.

2022 i read all four sarah caudwell "lawyers and a medieval law professor solve tax-related murders" novels (highly recommended), then six josephine tey detective novels (recommend brat farrar and miss pym disposes, also recommend the daughter of time but with the caveat that i think it hits way better if you are in fact a british person who had what i believe to be the typical british history education about the kings of england, which i am not; do NOT reocmmend a shilling for candles or the franchise affair). also several ngaio marsh books which slid through my brain leaving not a ripple nor a memory.

january 2024 i read the vast majority of ellis peters' work; the brother cadfael '12th-century monk detective' books fucking rule and i highly recommend them. her mystery novels set in then-contemporary midcentury england have some highlights but are overall mixed in quality.

this past january and i think also in 2023 i read a bunch of dick francis books, which are horse-themed financial thriller mysteries. weirdly good given that 1. that sounds insanely bad when you say it like that 2. he wrote like 40 of them and in the process explored the full range of imaginable horse-related financial thriller mystery plots and also some that cannot be imagined.

the edge - an extraordinarily wealthy man who doesn't use his wealth instead works as a Racecourse Detective solving horse crime. he goes double undercover first as himself, but Wealthily, and then immediately afterward as an actor pretending to be a waiter, in order to sneak onto a canadian horseracing millionaire murder mystery train and catch a blackmailer who takes people's horses. an excellent read that really delivers on its utterly deranged promises. plot not actually that suspenseful but i was having so much fun i didn't care. 5/5

romantic subplot/misogyny subrating: classic dick francis woman type 1, "older woman with strong character", present as a couple of different people but not nearly as centrally or strongly drawn as usual. meanwhile type 2, "romantic interest", is much more believably career-oriented and on-page competent than usual, having possibly absorbed the older women archetypes' life force. flirtation not actually that interesting though. 3.5/5

straight - jockey's brother he barely knew dies and turns out to have been a genius jeweler with an unfathomable collection of whimsical gadgets. jockey inherits all of brother's worldly goods, which apparently include $1.5 million of secret diamonds no one's ever heard about previously and no one knows how to find. plot resolution vaguely disappointing if you think about it too much but very fun in the moment and i love the cast of the Jewelry World 4/5

romantic subplot/misogyny subrating: strong-minded older woman is the love interest here; she's interesting and fun and has a weapon and i really enjoy how much the book completely endorses all the adultery she's doing. also we get an unusual young non-love-interest here in the person of the puzzle-loving jewelry business secretary who the protagonist helps to self-actualize and learn a new career. loved her. 5/5

hot money - jockey son reconciles with estranged father after possible assassination attempt, forcing him to also come into contact with his estranged stepsiblings and his father's several ex-wives. in the course of investigating all of them for murder he becomes much more engaged with and empathetic about their lives, and also almost gets exploded. good fun. i mostly really enjoy a) protagonist's mean bridge champion mother b) the father's instant adoption of his son's love of horses the second the concept of a horse is presented to him 3.5/5

romantic subplot/misogyny subrating: lots of women, lots of them very interesting and with various sympathetic or unsympathetic things going on. i don't think this one had romance in it but if it did it was too boring to be remembered. various things about the ending make me waver on the rating but i'll settle on 4/5

the danger - professional kidnapping consultant realizes recent kidnappings are connected-- by a single thread. a horse thread. this one was kind of weirdly paced but i actually think it's some of the best suspense/action scenes from francis, partly because this guy has better reason than most dick francis protagonists to think it's a good idea for him to do any of the things he does. final plot contrivance leaving to climatic peril only slightly irritating. loses points for unconvincing Cop Shit which is not francis's strength. also for the romance, see below. 2/5

romantic subplot/misogyny subrating: oh my fucking god uhhh sexual harrassment cw??? kind of???? he rescues a woman from two weeks of captivity with kidnappers, has to dress her because the kidnappers tranquilized her and took her clothes, notes that she looks fragile and physically adolescent even though she's an adult and later thinks about how hot she looked while unconscious and naked. then he follows her around a bunch because she's clearly emotionally dependent on him due to his status as a trained professional in kidnapping recovery, explicitly in a role that is a substitute for a psychiatrist, and it is in this capacity that he starts just suddenly kissing her and shit. the rest of his advice to her and the people around her as she recovers is quite empathetic and thoughtful but it's all kind of undermined by the fact that he thinks pursuing her romantically in this context is fine somehow???? aaaaaaaahhhhhh 0/5 fuck this book