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Foxfire_ posted:Miss Cornel is not good at crimes. Put body in the Smallbone box, put the Smallbone papers in the next most unlikely to be opened box, done. I assume the boxes are sufficiently full of papers – and these are boxes big enough to fit a small body inside them – that you cannot just take the papers out of one and shove them into another because it wouldn’t fit. The main questionable element to me was Miss Cornel’s willingness to incriminate the son of the employer she was willing to kill for. I guess she thought he wasn’t a patch on his old man.
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Oct 3, 2020 05:01
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I haven't really been following the thread, but I just finished Smallbone Deceased. Excellent suggestion! A good read, and a good fair-play mystery. I was a touch surprised by the ending, but it all fit together, and also I'm pretty bad at these (and don't try too hard to pre-solve) so a lot of mystery endings surprise me. I can completely buy Miss Cornel being willing to throw Bob under the bus. I suspect it was public knowledge in the non-Bohun portions of the office that Bob was phoning it in, hated the work, and probably was going to be a detriment to the firm if he'd stayed around; it's not hard to extrapolate from there that Miss Cornel viewed Bob as both an offense to Abel's memory and a real danger to her future. Framing Bob for the murders is still a mess and a stain on the Horniman name, but I can see how a sufficiently callous figure might view it as a necessary evil. The one rough spot in the ending for me was the "oh, Cockerill was secretly artistic, he couldn't have committed a brute-force murder" bit, which felt pretty unsatisfying. I'm glad he also got a solid evidence-based alibi.
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Oct 4, 2020 10:59
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Antivehicular posted:I can completely buy Miss Cornel being willing to throw Bob under the bus. I suspect it was public knowledge in the non-Bohun portions of the office that Bob was phoning it in, hated the work, and probably was going to be a detriment to the firm if he'd stayed around; it's not hard to extrapolate from there that Miss Cornel viewed Bob as both an offense to Abel's memory and a real danger to her future. Framing Bob for the murders is still a mess and a stain on the Horniman name, but I can see how a sufficiently callous figure might view it as a necessary evil. That checks out; I was mostly surprised that nobody ever brings it up. Anyway, I was planning on the next book being The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cozy, but… it looks like it's no longer on the American ebook stores? That's a pain in the neck! Does anybody want to list a preference between:
Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Oct 4, 2020 |
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Oct 4, 2020 17:39
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I already own The Shortest Way to Hades because I planned on reading it after the last mystery thread but never got around to it, so that one because it saves me money 
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Oct 4, 2020 17:56
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I haven't had time to finish off Smallbone but from reading the spoilers here Oh hey, apparently I got it right! I do also think throwing Bob under the bus seemed kind of a weak spot, but I'll see what the actual story says when I finish it tonight. Edit after reading the end: OK, I don't actually buy the screw thing as evidence. In my experience a dropped screw can bounce just about anywhere. The golfer hands thing I have no idea about, I just assumed it would mean she was strong enough. I was right about Duxford skipping out early (though there appears to be a typo in the kindle version of the book, that should be the 20th, surely?) though I never thought of Miss Cornel arranging things to share a weekend with him deliberately. Not buying Cockerill's handedness stuff either. Speaking as a lefty, I might do that job either way depending on the amount of strength needed. Oh, especially not buying the singer=not garotter stuff. Yay, I was right about the Horniman filing system. I knew it was going to be used somehow in the story. OK, right on the rucksack, and the motive for killing Miss Chittering. Still seems a bit weak, though. (The mention of the rucksack at the end of Ch. 14 was the big giveaway for Cornel being involved - it only appears once in the story before that). Would never have guessed the Left Luggage Office though, I don't think that even exists anymore, though it's a staple of London mystery fiction. Mecca-Benghazi posted:I already own The Shortest Way to Hades because I planned on reading it after the last mystery thread but never got around to it, so that one because it saves me money Me too, for exactly the same reason. It's been sitting on my kindle pile for years now, and even though I really enjoyed the other Sarah Caudwell books I never did read it. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 4, 2020 18:11
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The Shortest Way to Hades say's its the second of a trilogy on Amazon. Is the first one important/spoiled for anything or is it just disconnected same-detective?
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Oct 5, 2020 02:20
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Foxfire_ posted:The Shortest Way to Hades say's its the second of a trilogy on Amazon. Is the first one important/spoiled for anything or is it just disconnected same-detective? It's one of the four Hilary Tamar books. We read the first one in a previous incarnation of this thread, but it's not necessary to read Thus Was Adonis Murdered first. All right, it looks like we'll be going with The Shortest Way to Hades! I'll get the post up tomorrow.
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Oct 5, 2020 05:05
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It is to my profound irritation that I note that you cannot buy The Shortest Way to Hades on ebook in the USA, either. What the gently caress, copyright law? I will instead go forward with Stop Press unless someone has a better suggestion.
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Oct 13, 2020 00:59
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Well, that's weird. I'm in the US and I bought The Shortest Way to Hades on kindle. Though looking back at the date of the old thread, I guess that was ~5 years ago now. Must be a rights or publisher thing. Anyway, I'm happy with Stop Press. I don't know anything about the book at all, though I think I've heard of the author before.
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Oct 13, 2020 03:36
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Okay, let's (finally) get this started! Kindle link Michael Innes is one of my favorite forgotten mystery writers of the Golden Age, and I think one of the reasons he's largely forgotten and undervalued is that he's just so loving weird. I also think he's forgotten because his books all fall on a scale from "delightfully-bizarre phantasmagoria of mysterious events" ranging upward to "outright ridiculous parody," only his publishers keep billing him as being a serious mystery writer where Dark Events happen and then people get disappointed. Agora has been doing quite a decent line of reprints lately, but they all look super-serious and I think that's probably hurting them. He also had a quite decent career writing straight novels under his own name, J. I. M. Stewart, a name which incidentally is quite hard to get decent search results for! Anyway, Stop Press sees a number of miscellaneous figures called to the home of Richard Eliot, an incredibly-successful writer of detective stories, who is lately "doomed to the bin" as a result of mysterious pranks in which his villain-turned-detective, "the Spider," appears to be coming to life and tormenting his creator. This book is very long, very meandering, and my absolute favorite of all his works. Inflicting it upon you is going to be a joy for me. Start by reading to the end of Part One, Chapter Four.
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Oct 15, 2020 01:47
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Notes from chapter 1 Someone knows Elliot Sr's abandoned plans for the Spider => One of (1) he is the culprit, (2) he told someone [editor, ...], (3) he wrote it down somewhere [butler, maid, ...]
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Oct 17, 2020 18:25
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Foxfire_ posted:Notes from chapter 1 Someone knows Elliot Sr's abandoned plans for the Spider => One of (1) he is the culprit, (2) he told someone [editor, ...], (3) he wrote it down somewhere [butler, maid, ...] The thing about these possibilities is that if Mr. Eliot thought that (2) or (3) could have happened, he wouldn't find someone else knowing about it surprising enough to threaten his mental balance.
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Oct 18, 2020 03:38
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Up to part 1, Ch. 4 Difficult to say much yet. We have potential suspects of 12 male guests, an unknown number of female guests, plus at least four Eliots we know of, and also the college dons who seem involved somehow. Not to mention servants. (Are all these guests staying at the house? Is this place the size of Downton Abbey?) Mr Eliot himself seems the best suspect so far. How long was that paint up? It seems like it's been raining all afternoon and evening. Would even this special quick-drying paint be possible to apply in the rain? If not, it must have been there before. Why did nobody see it until later? Who discovered it anyway? For the "knows the unwritten plans of the Spider" stuff, assuming it's not Eliot or the secretary (dead), then it would point to someone who's had long-term access the rough drafts during Eliot's writing process. They would be able to see stuff that was edited out in the revisions. That probably means a member of the household, either a relative or a servant.
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Oct 18, 2020 06:34
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Hobnob posted:Up to part 1, Ch. 4 Again, the thing about this is that if this was possible, it wouldn't be worrying Mr. Elliott to the point of mental disturbance; he'd just say, 'oh, they must have read it in the draft stage.' Things are a bit slow, probably because we've changed books twice in midstream, but I'll go ahead and say read to the end of Chapter Six.
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Oct 22, 2020 02:46
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This is a much chewier book than the previous two. - Seems like anyone who's regularly in the house unattended had access to the previous drafts. They'd need to be a Spider-fan to have been reading before deciding on the crime, but that doesn't really rule anyone out. - Painting the graffiti in the rain, while hanging off the ledge, in a rush so not to be spotted doesn't seem that plausible. My guess for now is that it was painted in red earlier, then painted/covered over, with both paints washing off in the rain. (This doesn't really jive with there apparently being a mystery clarinet just before it's discovery) - Re: the meta play one of the partygoers discussed: Is this a mystery book about a mystery writer writing a mystery book about a mystery writer and we're going to shift perspectives  ? Everyone's dialog is very theatrical- Patricia and Belinda's search for red paint on their way out to the window was pretty sloppy if they didn't notice Toplady asleep. Or he wasn't there when they went out the window. - No idea what's up with Bussenschutt yet
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Oct 27, 2020 06:38
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Things are a bit slow this time, but hopefully it picks up now that the thread title has been corrected. Go ahead and read to the end of Part One (so, Chapter Nine).
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Oct 29, 2020 17:47
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Only up to Ch. 6 for now. Sorry, been a bit busy. OK, so the location of the paint is pretty tricky - If I'm understanding the architectural bits correctly, it's over a foot below a two-foot wide overhang. Not an easy place to paint, especially if it really was painted with a shaving brush - it must have taken some time and effort. Though its location means that it would be shielded from the rain a bit (I notice that it was said that earlier that the rain & wind had eased and it was coming down vertically). Especially as it's water-soluble paint. Something is going matter about the accent of the locals, but since we don't know what links the don sub-plot to the main plot, it's hard to see what and whether it'll ever be relevant. Also I don't think I know where we are in the country, I can't recall it being mentioned in the text, so it's hard to judge what the accent would be. Kermode is instantly a good candidate for the culprit. He's very familiar with the Spider (at least up to a certain date), and he would personally benefit if Eliot were to retire from writing. More noises-off (like the clarinet). Some kind of time-triggered recording, so the culprit can be present and accounted for when it happens? Hobnob fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Oct 30, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 00:36
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The way the prose is written in this makes it hard to reread for clues. For the hide-and-seek painting theft, a 3rd party coming in while everyone is hiding and the seeker is drugged makes the most practical sense, but seems like cheating for a mystery novel. The most fair way for that I would think is if it was one of the house staff, but none of them have names. So then we either have a pair that are both in on it, a pair that split up, or Archie drugged himself after doing the theft. I guess Bussenschutt is also a named character who isn't paired up and could potentially have entered the house after an accomplice drugs Archie. With the red paint also being watercolor and washing off, I'm going with it being set up in advance and painted over with another water soluble paint. Red shaving brush notwithstanding, that seems more possible to do than someone dangling off a wet balcony trying to paint watercolor on an already wet wall, while hoping that no one happens to walk by and glance upward.
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Nov 8, 2020 23:18
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Well, it's been approximately ten years since our last update, but that's no reason not to press on! Read to the end of Part Two, Chapter Four.
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Nov 9, 2020 02:27
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I think this one might be dead. Curse you, copyright, and the double-derail that killed our momentum! Curse you!!!!!
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Nov 28, 2020 19:05
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I finally finished slogging through the book, so necro-ing this for thoughts. It's pretty bad as a mystery None of the crimes are solved or even really discussed in terms of mechanism. It sort of seems like it's trying to be motive/psychology focused, but people also don't have sensible behavior. Going through each of the crimes: Burglary at Birdwire's Winter uses his skills as a middle-aged Oxford classics professor to find a time when the house is empty, drug the pack of dogs, break into the house, steal stuff, then dump the stolen items off, all without leaving any evidence behind. That summary is about as much description of the how as is in the actual book. His motive is to try to find some blackmail that he infers she has based on a previously-unmentioned conversation they had years before the story, so that he get one of his colleagues to stop inexplicably doing nothing with an archeological find. Things at Rust Rupert did everything. There will be no discussion of how he painted the graffiti on the house while standing on a tiny ledge, in the rainstorm, in a small time window while no one was looking, despite spending an entire earlier chapter focusing on how that would be difficult. I guess he was just lucky. The clarinet is Rupert playing a clarinet and then running away or something before anyone follows the sound. For the painting theft, his alibi of having been constantly accompanied by Cavey was accomplished by convincing the senile old lady living in the attic to seamlessly swap places with him, with it being dark enough for Cavey to not notice the difference or recognize that it's not his voice replying to her (also hoping that she never turns on her flashlight), then swapping back after the theft His motive for all of this is as follows: 1. As adults are fundamentally incapable of creating new fictional ideas (all the psychologist/academic characters nod approvingly), all of Eliot's novels are subconsciously repackaging ideas he and Rupert had when they were 10. This is how Rupert knows unpublished plot details 2. One of these ideas is a murder committed by injecting a camel with a slow acting poison so it dies and strands the rider in the desert 3. Decades ago, Rupert tried to use that idea to murder Shoon (for some unspecified reason), but Shoon survived 4. If Elliot publishes Death in the Desert and Shoon reads it, Shoon will obviously think: "Aha! that time 20 years ago when my camel died was surely a murder attempt! I must get revenge on all the vaguely remembered acquaintances who were around at the time." 5. Therefore, Rupert must use all means available to prevent the book from being published, or failing that, to preemptively try to kill Shoon again 6. Scooby Doo hijinks are the best way to accomplish this Pigs at Shoon Abbey Rupert's plan to get Elliot to stop writing has failed, but he's already got a perfectly good elaborately-timed-distraction-and-theatrical-pig-killing plan, and it would be a shame to let that go to waste Other Shoon Abbey Things After having realized that Rupert is the prankster, Eliot has decided an appropriate response is: 1. Send threatening notes 2. Infiltrate their ruthless arms dealer host's private arsenal and steal explosives 3. Blow up the coat closet 4. Sneak into the Shoon's locked up antiquities collection, plant another bomb, lure Rupert into also going into the collection (but hopefully standing somewhere where he will be protected from shrapnel), explode bomb, thereby scaring Rupert away 5. Oops, explosion collapsed the building Rupert's fallback Shoon Abbey Plan (aka. the one good one) Hide outside in the dark, then shoot Shoon with a gun, thereby killing him
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Apr 12, 2021 00:34
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Ehehehehehesomeone actually finished itFoxfire_ posted:Winter uses his skills as a middle-aged Oxford classics professor to find a time when the house is empty, drug the pack of dogs, break into the house, steal stuff, then dump the stolen items off, all without leaving any evidence behind. This is just how Oxford dons are. I can see that if you're an American or a Cambridge man you might not know this. quote:1. As adults are fundamentally incapable of creating new fictional ideas (all the psychologist/academic characters nod approvingly), all of Eliot's novels are subconsciously repackaging ideas he and Rupert had when they were 10. This is how Rupert knows unpublished plot details This bit is interesting to me because… Innes is the same kind of writer as Elliot (although much less successful) so this kind of ambivalent attitude to his own work seems to be one they share. quote:5. Oops, explosion collapsed the building I'm pretty sure he collapsed the building on purpose after getting a chance to see the collection and deciding it was indecent. Thank you for reading my favorite terrible book.
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Apr 12, 2021 14:47
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OK, that summary makes me feel less guilty about not finishing it. (At the time, I was not feeling like spending my free time to do anything as cerebral as reading - at least not if I also had to think about what I read). There's nothing so infuriating in a mystery story than clues that are treated as important and meaningful, only to later get waved away as if the author couldn't think up a proper explaination. That said, I might eventually finish it myself because the rest of the story sounds absolutely bonkers. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Apr 12, 2021 |
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Apr 12, 2021 23:50
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