A day of small pleasures
May. 22nd, 2025 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cathrowanPedicure and new shimmery toenail polish. An orange and cardamom latte from a new-to-me indie coffee shop. A bunch of tulips to put on the dining room table.
cathrowan(no subject)
May. 15th, 2025 08:15 amskygiantsWhile on the topic of Genre Mystery I also want to write up Nev Marsh's Murder in Old Bombay, a book marketed and titled as mystery-qua-mystery that I do not think really succeeds as either a mystery or a romance. However! It absolutely nails it as a kind of genre that we don't have as much anymore as a genre but that I really unironically love: picaresque adventure through a richly-realized historical milieu in which our protagonist happens by chance to stumble into, across, around, and through various significant events.
(I said this togenarti, and she said, 'that kind of book absolutely does still exist,' and okay, true, yes, it does, but it doesn't exist as Genre! it gets published as Literary Fiction and does not proliferate in mass-market paperback and mass-market paperback is where I want to be looking for it.)
Murder in Old Bombay is set in 1892 and focuses on Number One Sherlock Holmes Fan Captain Jim Agnihotri, an Anglo-Indian Orphan of Mysterious Parentage who while convalescing in hospital becomes obsessed with the unsolved murders of two local Parsi women -- a new bride and her teenaged sister-in-law -- who fell dramatically out of a clock tower to their deaths.
Having left the British Army, and finding himself somewhat at loose ends, Captain Jim goes to write an article about the murder and soon finds himself engaged as private detective to the grieving family. In the course of trying to solve the mystery, he falls in love with the whole family -- including and especially but not exclusively the Spirited Young Socialite Daughter -- and also wanders all around India bumping into various Battles, Political Intrigues and High-Tension Situations.
Why do I say the mystery does not work? Well, this is the author's first book, and you can sort of tell in the way the actual clues to the mystery become assembled: a lot of, 'oh, I picked up this piece of paper! conveniently it tells me exactly what I need to know!' and 'I went to the this location and the first person I saw happened to be the person I was looking for, and we fell immediately into conversation and he told me everything!' You know, you can see the strings.
Why do I say the romance does not work? Well, it's the most by-the-numbers relationship in the book ... Diana has exactly all the virtues that you'd expect of a Spirited Young Parsi Socialite from 1892 written in 2020, and lacks all of the vices that you'd expect likewise. Jim thinks she's the bees' knees, but alas! he is a poor army captain of mysterious parentage and class and community divide them. Every time they even come close to actually talking about their different beliefs and prejudices the book immediately pulls back and goes Look! she's so Spirited! It's fine.
However, the portrait of place and time is so rich and fun -- Nev Marsh talks a bit in the afterword about how much the central family and community in question draws on her own family history, and she is clearly having a wonderful time doing it. The setting feels confident in a way that plot doesn't quite, and the setting is unusual and interesting enough to find in an English-language mystery that this goes a long way for me. And, structurally, although the twists involving the Mystery were rarely satisfying to me, I loved it every time historical events came crashing into the plot and forced Captain Jim to stop worrying about the mystery for a few chapters and have some Historical Adventure instead. My favorite portion of the book is the middle part, which he spends collecting a small orphanage's worth of lost children and then is so sad when it turns out most of them do have living parents and he has to give them back. I'm also sad that you had to give the orphans back, Captain Jim.
(I said this to
genarti, and she said, 'that kind of book absolutely does still exist,' and okay, true, yes, it does, but it doesn't exist as Genre! it gets published as Literary Fiction and does not proliferate in mass-market paperback and mass-market paperback is where I want to be looking for it.) Murder in Old Bombay is set in 1892 and focuses on Number One Sherlock Holmes Fan Captain Jim Agnihotri, an Anglo-Indian Orphan of Mysterious Parentage who while convalescing in hospital becomes obsessed with the unsolved murders of two local Parsi women -- a new bride and her teenaged sister-in-law -- who fell dramatically out of a clock tower to their deaths.
Having left the British Army, and finding himself somewhat at loose ends, Captain Jim goes to write an article about the murder and soon finds himself engaged as private detective to the grieving family. In the course of trying to solve the mystery, he falls in love with the whole family -- including and especially but not exclusively the Spirited Young Socialite Daughter -- and also wanders all around India bumping into various Battles, Political Intrigues and High-Tension Situations.
Why do I say the mystery does not work? Well, this is the author's first book, and you can sort of tell in the way the actual clues to the mystery become assembled: a lot of, 'oh, I picked up this piece of paper! conveniently it tells me exactly what I need to know!' and 'I went to the this location and the first person I saw happened to be the person I was looking for, and we fell immediately into conversation and he told me everything!' You know, you can see the strings.
Why do I say the romance does not work? Well, it's the most by-the-numbers relationship in the book ... Diana has exactly all the virtues that you'd expect of a Spirited Young Parsi Socialite from 1892 written in 2020, and lacks all of the vices that you'd expect likewise. Jim thinks she's the bees' knees, but alas! he is a poor army captain of mysterious parentage and class and community divide them. Every time they even come close to actually talking about their different beliefs and prejudices the book immediately pulls back and goes Look! she's so Spirited! It's fine.
However, the portrait of place and time is so rich and fun -- Nev Marsh talks a bit in the afterword about how much the central family and community in question draws on her own family history, and she is clearly having a wonderful time doing it. The setting feels confident in a way that plot doesn't quite, and the setting is unusual and interesting enough to find in an English-language mystery that this goes a long way for me. And, structurally, although the twists involving the Mystery were rarely satisfying to me, I loved it every time historical events came crashing into the plot and forced Captain Jim to stop worrying about the mystery for a few chapters and have some Historical Adventure instead. My favorite portion of the book is the middle part, which he spends collecting a small orphanage's worth of lost children and then is so sad when it turns out most of them do have living parents and he has to give them back. I'm also sad that you had to give the orphans back, Captain Jim.
(no subject)
May. 10th, 2025 09:22 pmskygiantsI read K.J. Charles' Death in the Spires more or less in the course of a day, which happened to be the same day that I was reading comments on/responding to blotthis' post about aesthetic satisfaction in Genre: Mystery and Genre: Horror.
Death in the Spires is a really useful case study for genre: Mystery because Charles' usual Genre is Gay Romance. As this book was coming out she made a number of posts and announcements along the lines of: hello Readership, please be aware, this one's not Romance, it's Mystery, which does not mean there won't be romance in it, but please go into it with Mystery expectations rather than Romance expectations.
So already I was going into it expecting to pay attention to the rules of genre and how they worked or did not work in this book. And, having finished it feels really clear that the exact same fabric of characters and plot, tailored into a different shape, would form a standard Charles Romance, but because of the pattern being used the finished product is undeniably a Mystery, no question about it. And quite a fun one! I read it in a day!
The premise takes inspiration from Gaudy Night and The Secret History, among others: at the turn of the 20th century, a clique of golden youths forms at Oxford that's shattered by interpersonal romantic drama culminating in a mysterious murder; ten years later, having just received a particularly vicious poison-pen letter, one of the golden-youths-that-was decides it's finally time to figure out which one of his best-friends-that-was is a killer. The youths all seem likeable and the loss of the trust and friendship among them as important to the plot as the murder itself, which is one of the things that makes the book work, IMO.
Because of blot's post, I've been thinking a fair bit about what I want mystery-as-genre to do. P.D. James said very famously that the mystery novel is the restoration of order from disorder: a murder happens, but by the end we understand why and how, and something is done about it to bring justice. Or not done about it; occasionally the detective decides that the just response is to not do anything about it. I do like it when that happens, even if I disagree with the detective on what the just response is. I like it when justice is legitimately a problem, in mystery novels; I like it when the solution is not just the solution to a puzzle (though of course it is pleasant when a puzzle is good) but an attempt at answering the question of 'how do you repair the world, when something terrible has happened that broke it? Because every death is something that breaks it.' I say an attempt because of course this is not really a question that can be answered satisfactorily, but it is nonetheless important to keep trying. So, really, I suppose, I think a mystery novel has succeeded when it has, a little bit, failed: the puzzle is solvable, and solved, but the problem is unsolvable, and the tension between those two things is one of the things that most interests me in a mystery book.
'I want to be a little uncomfortable at the end because of how we as human beings have to keep trying to answer a question that has no good answer by answering questions that do have answers' is probably not a fair thing to ask of mystery novels, which are also, famously, comfort reading. Nonetheless it is what I think the great books in this genre achieve and I think I am right to ask it. I am not saying that Death in the Spires is a great book of the genre, but it is asking the kinds of questions that I want a mystery to ask, and it satisfied me in that, in a way that many modern mystery novels don't.
( a brief detour into spoiler territory )
blotthis' post about aesthetic satisfaction in Genre: Mystery and Genre: Horror. Death in the Spires is a really useful case study for genre: Mystery because Charles' usual Genre is Gay Romance. As this book was coming out she made a number of posts and announcements along the lines of: hello Readership, please be aware, this one's not Romance, it's Mystery, which does not mean there won't be romance in it, but please go into it with Mystery expectations rather than Romance expectations.
So already I was going into it expecting to pay attention to the rules of genre and how they worked or did not work in this book. And, having finished it feels really clear that the exact same fabric of characters and plot, tailored into a different shape, would form a standard Charles Romance, but because of the pattern being used the finished product is undeniably a Mystery, no question about it. And quite a fun one! I read it in a day!
The premise takes inspiration from Gaudy Night and The Secret History, among others: at the turn of the 20th century, a clique of golden youths forms at Oxford that's shattered by interpersonal romantic drama culminating in a mysterious murder; ten years later, having just received a particularly vicious poison-pen letter, one of the golden-youths-that-was decides it's finally time to figure out which one of his best-friends-that-was is a killer. The youths all seem likeable and the loss of the trust and friendship among them as important to the plot as the murder itself, which is one of the things that makes the book work, IMO.
Because of blot's post, I've been thinking a fair bit about what I want mystery-as-genre to do. P.D. James said very famously that the mystery novel is the restoration of order from disorder: a murder happens, but by the end we understand why and how, and something is done about it to bring justice. Or not done about it; occasionally the detective decides that the just response is to not do anything about it. I do like it when that happens, even if I disagree with the detective on what the just response is. I like it when justice is legitimately a problem, in mystery novels; I like it when the solution is not just the solution to a puzzle (though of course it is pleasant when a puzzle is good) but an attempt at answering the question of 'how do you repair the world, when something terrible has happened that broke it? Because every death is something that breaks it.' I say an attempt because of course this is not really a question that can be answered satisfactorily, but it is nonetheless important to keep trying. So, really, I suppose, I think a mystery novel has succeeded when it has, a little bit, failed: the puzzle is solvable, and solved, but the problem is unsolvable, and the tension between those two things is one of the things that most interests me in a mystery book.
'I want to be a little uncomfortable at the end because of how we as human beings have to keep trying to answer a question that has no good answer by answering questions that do have answers' is probably not a fair thing to ask of mystery novels, which are also, famously, comfort reading. Nonetheless it is what I think the great books in this genre achieve and I think I am right to ask it. I am not saying that Death in the Spires is a great book of the genre, but it is asking the kinds of questions that I want a mystery to ask, and it satisfied me in that, in a way that many modern mystery novels don't.
( a brief detour into spoiler territory )