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Yeah, jeez. I thought that she was like a big success. She's an Irish writer writing stories in this interesting kind of shared-universe scheme where a secondary character from the previous book is the protagonist of the next book. For example, the first book, In the Woods, is about a police officer and his partner investigating the murder of a child that mirrors an unsolved crime he was involved in as a child, then the second book follows the partner after the events of In the Woods. I mostly asked this as kind of a stealth question to see if anyone has watched the new TV adaptation (I think it's on Starz?) but I take it no one has. Maybe we're over the crest of the Tana French wave now? I feel like she was everywhere for a while. Her last novel, The Witch Elm, which I don't think has any connection to the Dublin Murder Squad series, hit a few best-of lists last year I think.
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Dec 7, 2019 16:36
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My excuse is none of the books have been translated into Finnish (yet) nor has the show been aired, so they have zero visibility here. Might ask for one for Christmas now. e: I guess In the Woods. Seems to be in print.
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Dec 7, 2019 16:41
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Mike Danger posted:I’d be interested to hear what people think of Tana French. She seems inescapable these days, and I really like her, although I couldn’t really tell you what it is that she does different from everyone else. I haven't yet read any of her work, but my father decided to get back into reading fiction after hearing a review of or interview with her and he's gone through enough of her books in rapid pace (out of the ordinary for him) that he's feeling burnt out. Still speaks very highly of her writing style and plotting.
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Dec 7, 2019 18:02
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I like her characters and the way she builds up atmosphere - Broken Harbour's desolation and fear of the unknown/future being my favorite - but I'm less keen on the actual plots. Also, she gets really verbose with her descriptions.
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Dec 7, 2019 20:35
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Mike Danger posted:Yeah, jeez. I thought that she was like a big success. Checking out her wikipedia page I see that she's made a big splash, yeah. I won't pretend to be up on everything new though: most of my reads are old stuff, so I'm sure anyone rooted in the modern crime fiction world knows of her. In any case, it sounds intriguing so I'll be sure to check her out. Thanks.
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Dec 7, 2019 22:07
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She's pretty big, as mystery authors go. Not in the King-Rowling-Patterson-Brown tier, but probably in the one below that with most living big mystery authors.
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Dec 7, 2019 22:16
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See Knives Out, thread. it's very good.
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Dec 8, 2019 20:19
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ketchup vs catsup posted:See Knives Out, thread. it's very good. Just came here to say this myself. It's simultaneously a love letter to and send-up of cozy mysteries of all varieties.
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Dec 10, 2019 22:42
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He was tough, a tough guy. He had a tough guy gun behind his tough guy back on his wall - a tough, tough guy wall. "Are you looking at my tough guy gun?" he said toughly but also guyly. (Reading "Paris in the Dark" by Robert Olen Butler and not really appreciating the writing.)
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Dec 26, 2019 02:09
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I'm very sad that nobody discussing Margery Allingham seems to have caught the critical point of similarity between Dancers in Mourning and Coroner's Pidgin.
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Feb 16, 2020 18:28
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm very sad that nobody discussing Margery Allingham seems to have caught the critical point of similarity between Dancers in Mourning and Coroner's Pidgin. I just read I don't have time to "get" "things".
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Feb 16, 2020 18:43
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Great murder mysteries I have read in the last month: John Dickson Carr's Problem of the Green Capsule and Death Turns the Tables. Green Capsule is an absolute masterpiece of a puzzle and when it snaps together you nod along, awed at how the murderer pulled it off. Turns the Tables meanwhile wasn't as good? I didn't like the tricks at the end, even if I understood them. Fortunately it was short. Good murder mysteries: PD James' Death in Holy Orders. Great psychology, great look at this religious college, great work with the detective being a person instead of a mystery solver. Shame the actual mystery was kind of straightforward? I'm spoiled by Carr and Agatha Christie and their wild twists, so it was all "...oh. that's it?" Still, I read this 400+ page monster in like three days so it was absolutely great to read. Meh: I'm fifty pages from the end of PD James' Cover Her Face and I honestly don't care who did it as long as I don't have to read about any of these people ever again. You can really see the difference in James' writing quality - her first book vs like her tenth book. I'm still ordering #2 from the library after I finish this, but jeez. Not recommended unless you're a completionist like I am. Now to complain about how danged hard it is to find Carr's books. They are all out of print and have inflated prices and yet I am going to have to collect each and every one of them somehow. My life is clearly suffering
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Feb 27, 2020 21:37
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I remember liking Problem of the Green Capsule but a) it really kind of glosses over "oh hey somebody murdered a shitload of children recently" and b) I can't believe anybody ever decided to call it that and not use the alternate title The Black Spectacles.
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Feb 28, 2020 03:37
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Rand Brittain posted:I remember liking Problem of the Green Capsule but It helped(?) that the central murder to solve was directly related to the child murder, as in, solve one, solve the other. So it didn't feel like Fell was ignoring the children, outside of the bit where he had to in order to set up the case. I saw a review site mention that Carr writes fantasies, i.e. these puzzles couldn't work in real life, and given what I've read of him.... yeah. If you go with it though they're extremely good.
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Feb 28, 2020 03:56
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StrixNebulosa posted:It helped(?) that the central murder to solve was directly related to the child murder, as in, solve one, solve the other. So it didn't feel like Fell was ignoring the children, outside of the bit where he had to in order to set up the case. I didn't really mean that Fell was ignoring the children so much as that it didn't really feel like a community that had just been riven by a senseless and tragic crime.
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Feb 28, 2020 03:58
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Rand Brittain posted:I didn't really mean that Fell was ignoring the children so much as that it didn't really feel like a community that had just been riven by a senseless and tragic crime. Oh, that. Yeah. Maybe child poisoning was more common back then, so it's now like us in america hearing about yet another shooting. (seriously though it's a failing on the author's part.)
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Feb 28, 2020 04:03
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I've had time to think and Papa La-Bas by John Dickson Carr is a mystery novel desperately, profoundly in need of an editor because holy gods, man, slow down. In the middle of the sequence where the victim gets murdered, a historian friend of the family rambles in, says he had a nightmare, describes it, goes off into a segue about historical stuff in New Orleans, and then the murder happens. It confuses a scene that already has too much going on, and I know I'm going to have to reread it just to understand it. For context: this is one of the last novels he wrote, while paralyzed on one side with a stroke, and it's incredible that he was able to keep writing. But also I really have the sense that the quality is slipping compared to the other two earlier novels I wrote in his heyday.
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Mar 2, 2020 11:53
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I’ve been reading the Henry Gamadge series by Elizabeth Daly lately. Really good stuff.
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May 2, 2020 19:09
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I like Daly's prose, and her setting in WWII-and-just-before New York City, which is full of the brownstones of very rich families rather than skyscrapers but is still a metropolis.Nothing Can Rescue Me posted:“You’re quite wrong; Florence can make a very good will indeed. She never financed digs; in the good old days she took her savings and went on the market. Just like her father, has the Midas touch. She made half a million.” Incidentally, Felony & Mayhem, who publish these, are giving 30% off all ebooks for the duration of the pandemic.
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May 2, 2020 21:24
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I'm reading the first Nero Wolfe book and really enjoying it after kind of bouncing off of Christie.
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May 3, 2020 03:21
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PsychedelicWarlord posted:I'm reading the first Nero Wolfe book and really enjoying it after kind of bouncing off of Christie. That's a natural progression.
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May 3, 2020 09:50
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Mike Danger posted:Yeah, jeez. I thought that she was like a big success. She's an Irish writer writing stories in this interesting kind of shared-universe scheme where a secondary character from the previous book is the protagonist of the next book. For example, the first book, In the Woods, is about a police officer and his partner investigating the murder of a child that mirrors an unsolved crime he was involved in as a child, then the second book follows the partner after the events of In the Woods. Oh In The Woods? I actually read that completely randomly when it literally fell off the back of a Fed-Ex truck and landed at my feet and the driver wouldn't take it back, so I shrugged and took it home to read and it was mostly okay, I guess. I didn't really have any excitement for it.
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May 4, 2020 01:31
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Spotted this and thought it was interesting: an unsold pilot for a Nero Wolfe show featuring young William Shatner as Archie. (He's actually pretty good!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_AoebAAig4
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May 9, 2020 21:10
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I know there's an Italian Nero Wolfe TV series but I haven't been able to watch a single whole episode.
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May 9, 2020 21:30
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I know there's an Italian Nero Wolfe TV series but I haven't been able to watch a single whole episode. Yeah, I watched some of it trying to find online versions of the A&E show. It's . . . the Italian Spiderman of Nero Wolfe shows. Selachian posted:Spotted this and thought it was interesting: an unsold pilot for a Nero Wolfe show featuring young William Shatner as Archie. (He's actually pretty good!) That was really neat. I don't think this was one of the published stories, but it had the feel for the first half, then the last half sorta collapsed. Shatner does a pretty good Archie but this Wolfe isn't on the same level as Chaykin. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:08 on May 10, 2020 |
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May 9, 2020 23:45
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I finished It Walks By Night by John Dickson Carr. Pretty good, although I thought the author was kind of stretching to make the villain unsympathetic. It's hard to believe that anybody in that situation could have been as cold and calculating as he implies they were, and it's hard to believe they wouldn't get off scot-free in front of a jury.
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May 28, 2020 01:18
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Rand Brittain posted:I finished It Walks By Night by John Dickson Carr. Pretty good, although I thought the author was kind of stretching to make the villain unsympathetic. It's hard to believe that anybody in that situation could have been as cold and calculating as he implies they were, and it's hard to believe they wouldn't get off scot-free in front of a jury. Everything in Carr/Dickson whodunits is 100% implausible, and every character is a cliché. But not offensively so. 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 02:36 on May 28, 2020 |
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May 28, 2020 02:34
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The Arthur Conan Doyle estate is suing Netflix over a movie based on Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes books. Springer allegedly swiped the concept of Sherlock Holmes being cold and unemotional at first and then learning to be nicer. No, really.
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Jun 27, 2020 20:39
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Wow.
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Jun 27, 2020 22:53
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With till they find out about tsundere Wait this is going to end up with lawyers making out, isn't it
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Jun 28, 2020 01:31
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i thought holmes is public domain anyway...? edit: nevermind i actually read the link Mr. Steak fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Jun 28, 2020 |
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Jun 28, 2020 02:51
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The Holmes estate is legendary in its parasitical nature. I can't wait until 2023 or so when the very last stories are out of copyright in the US.
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Jun 28, 2020 07:26
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All estates are, by nature, parasitical.
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Jul 6, 2020 01:24
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Christopher Tolkien seems to have done alright by his dad's work, for the most part.
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Jul 6, 2020 16:47
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I've finally gotten around to watching the old Brother Cadfael adaptations with Derek Jacobi. The production values are just . . .amazing. Mannequins standing in as actors in some scenes. "Corpses" that blink and breathe. It's just great. Absolutely great. Every single dead body: absolutely coated in random flowers
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Jul 6, 2020 17:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I've finally gotten around to watching the old Brother Cadfael adaptations with Derek Jacobi. The production values are just . . .amazing. Mannequins standing in as actors in some scenes. "Corpses" that blink and breathe. It's just great. Absolutely great. Three different Hughs! Fight scenes that wouldn't look out of place in a high school production of Romeo and Juliet! Randomly altered plot points from the books for reasons! Jacobi's portrayal of Cadfael is basically the only saving grace of that show, but that being said, it was also good enough to make me want to read the books.
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Jul 9, 2020 04:15
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Fighting Trousers posted:Three different Hughs! Fight scenes that wouldn't look out of place in a high school production of Romeo and Juliet! Randomly altered plot points from the books for reasons! Jacobi's portrayal of Cadfael is basically the only saving grace of that show, but that being said, it was also good enough to make me want to read the books. OK, in Morbid Taste fpr.Bones, does the book do a better job of explaining why nobody smells the bosy swap
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Jul 9, 2020 17:27
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:OK, in Morbid Taste fpr.Bones, does the book do a better job of explaining why nobody smells the bosy swap You know, it's been long enough since I last read MTfB, I don't really remember. Ah well. Good excuse to re-read the series.
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Jul 9, 2020 20:59
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The relic container was noted as being very nice and well-sealed as I recall.
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Jul 10, 2020 15:38
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I'm looking to dig into Ngaio Marsh's stuff, to at least give it a try. Anyone have any favourite Alleyn books they would recommend?
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Jul 11, 2020 06:23
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