About book The Affair Of The Mutilated Mink (1999)
I would have liked to like this book; it's got a flavor of Georgette Heyer's mysteries, which by and large I DO enjoy. Where it falls down for me is in the amount of exposition - pages of it, which frankly I skipped - and in the sheer involvedness of the final solution. Agatha Christie managed to have everyone on the Orient Express murder the same guy without half the explanations that come in this book.That's part of my issue too. When it comes to murder mysteries of the Golden Age, you have the Agatha Christie treatment - the characters aren't deep, but they're vivid, sort of slashed in and stock, but you know who they are and what they're like. Lots of dark and sulky girls and fair, forthright boys, or vice versa. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the Dorothy Sayers treatment, where the characters are fully drawn, from their literary preferences to their preferred wines, and lead (it seems to me) a fuller interior life than *I* do.In either method, the story works because the solution is in tune with the writing. Christie writes puzzles, really; all the clues provided if you only squint hard enough, and the solution can be thought out, and not felt too deeply. People are being murdered left right and center, sometimes children even, or old ladies, and the writing style keeps you at a safe remove. Sayers sort of developed from writing that way as well, on to very emotionally real story telling and murders, but it's consistent with HER characters. You take your cue on how to feel from the way that the characters feel about it. I can't see a Christie hero having a mental breakdown at the end of a successful case because an unrepentant murderer is being hanged. We don't have one either, but we can understand why Lord Peter Wimsey does, and we can even be relieved about it. Different styles.These books, the motives and solutions sort of fall into the Sayers camp while the entire story and the characters are in the Christie vein. The style sort of changes up a bit, from situation comedy to drama, and it just - lost me. I know that's true because I found myself jumping forward 6 pages at a time and I rarely do that.Anyway. What I do like? In this one, I liked the spoofing of the Scotland Yard expert, very much. I liked his cat burglar valet, which is a wonderful send-up of at least three Golden Age detectives I can think of off the top of my head. I liked the name dropping, one character mentioning he'd had dinner with Lord Peter Wimsey, another listing off available detectives and naming Appleby and Alleyn among them. Not a far leap, to treat those famous literary detectives as real in a murder mystery of the appropriate time period, but I've never actually seen it done, I suppose you have to get permission. I like the main detective, though I'm glad we don't see too much of him, his hapless "oh dear oh dear" cover persona would probably wear on me pretty quickly.At any rate. I can't rate this book highly because I don't think it works. But I wish it did.
In this book, written in 1981, but set in the 20s, a "talkies"-mad Earl is immensely flattered when a movie producer wants to set his latest costume drama in the Earl's country house. The producer (together with the Earl's favourite actor, who's supposed to star in the film) are invited to the house to scope it out. And before the Earl knows it, the whole thing has turned into a house party, with every single room in the massive house in use.I read the first 120 or so pages. It started out well. The author was clearly having fun with the setting and the characters were nicely quirky. After a while, though, the quirky characters turned cartoonish. The dialogue, especially, started to do my head in. Stilted, exaggerated and (in the case of an Italian character who turns up out of the blue) frankly offensive. I was also annoyed by characters behaving in extremely stupid ways. There's a very confusing scene set in the middle of the night, with characters creeping around and hitting each other, and the next morning, no one says anything to anyone else, even the characters who were doing absolutely nothing wrong (and who no one would have thought were doing something wrong). I just couldn't be arsed to continue.MY GRADE: A DNF.
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This book is a lot of fun. Nods and sly winks to all the inspector / whodunnits that have gone before.Actually laughed out loud at this part (the speakers are Inspector Wilkins to Lord Burford):"When I joined the force, I never saw myself out of the uniformed branch - perhaps a sergeant, at best. And in a peaceful place like Westshire, thought that poachers and the odd petty thief would be the extent of my contact with criminal types. But who could have anticipated the crime wave that's broken out among the English upper classes in recent years?""Crime wave? Put it as bad as that, do you?""Oh, my goodness, your lordship, yes. Never a week goes by without a nobleman being murdered in his library - oh, beg your pardon, didn't mean to alarm you - or a don in his study, or an heiress in her bath. And where's it left me? Oh, I've made Chief Inspector, true -"So, like I said: fun. Intricate. But somehow not satisfactory. The ending, once again, left me slightly disappointed. And worst of all: there wasn't enough Inspector Wilkins. Recommended for any fan of the Christie, Marsh, Sayers legacy.
—Karen
This is the second in the Inspector Wilkins series, although it's the third one I've read. As before, a weekend party assembles at Alderley, country house of the Duke and Duchess of Burford. Also present are their daughter Lady Geraldine, two of her suitors, some of the Duchess's relatives and a variety of film people. Later arrivals are Jemima Dove, library cataloguer and Laura Lorenzo, a florid Italian film star - no-one knows how she got invited. After a trip to a local talent contest, Laura
—Peter Auber
I thoroughly enjoyed this with one carping point which I'll make later. It is well plotted and gallops along at a cracking pace. There are plenty of red herrings for the reader with some nicely drawn characters and a good dash of satire. Two corpses, a fair few assaults in a posh country house and a blackmail diversion which for me has an unexpected twist should be enough for anyone. It makes me want to continue with the series. My carp is that for some reason the publisher (in the USA because it's a Kindle) has seen fit to translate British terms like torch (to flashlight) and time (a quarter past five to five fifteen) which entices a pedant like me to look for more, thus spoiling the enjoyment of the book slightly and, for a British reader, losing the mood music of the 1930's.
—Richard Thomas
