In trying to tag this book, I finally hit on its primary problem. Mystery? No. Noir? Nope. Hardboiled? I'll answer that when I stop laughing. It's reaIn trying to tag this book, I finally hit on its primary problem. Mystery? No. Noir? Nope. Hardboiled? I'll answer that when I stop laughing. It's really about, nothing. It starts out with promise. It's the day of Bond's 45th Birthday, 1969 and he's having recurring dreams about WWII. Specifically when he was a 19 year-old Lieutenant on the day after the D-Day landings, in the farms surrounding Normandy. It's the day he first faces death. Even though, since the war, he's lived a life where he's faced death many, many more times, it's that first time that still haunts him. And then the rest of the book happens. He's sent to a small African nation to stop a revolution, so there's cold war imperialism, poverty, racism and misogyny. You know, Bond stuff. But even that, which either sounds offensive as hell or a laundry-list of Bond tropes, is boring. Stuff happens. He sort of falls in love or something(?). Seriously, I don't know. Then he's shot, goes back to the UK to recover and then ... GOES SOLO! Because REVENGE. (or something, again--no clue). In this book it means nothing special. Just Bond traveling to England, Africa and Washington, DC buying stuff. Eating stuff. Running into Felix's nephew. More stuff, more food, more buying stuff and then shooting folks. And then, thankfully it ends. It ends well. With a very cinematic and very Bond novels flourish. I've JUST finished this and if you held a walther ppk to my head, I couldn't tell you what it was about. Seriously, no clue. Good start, good finish and ... stuff in-between. I want my couple of hours back, or better yet, I'll just go watch From Russia With Love.
Addendum: I don't give one star ratings lightly. I very rarely do it. I try very hard to find something positive and redeeming in a book and push it up a star. The word-salad I had to wade through and the racism were deal-breakers. Sure, it's of the period, but it was awkwardly shoe-horned in as if to say: "Hey, I know this book is set in 1969 and I totally haven't described anything of the late 60s for about 50 pages now, so here's some ugly casual mid-20th century colonial racism. Okay?" No. Just. No. ...more
Blood and Circuses, the 6th Phryne Fisher mystery, is so far, the least satisfying, and I think I know why. Kerry GreenI can tell what happened here.
Blood and Circuses, the 6th Phryne Fisher mystery, is so far, the least satisfying, and I think I know why. Kerry Greenwood has written the character for 6 books and five years at this point. I can almost hear her inner monologue: Am I in a rut? Are all of the books going to follow a pattern? Do I want to switch things up a bit? She did that.
This is essentially supposed to be a fish out of water story, with Phryne playing the fish. Specifically a play on a subtrope of FOW -- City Mouse. Phryne is stripped of her wealth, privilege, house, car and family. How will she survive? Except Ms. Greenwood seems to forget what she has told us in each of the other five books in the series: Phryne can take care of herself, that is her superpower. She grew up poor. She didn't gain wealth until she was a teen and even then, didn't take it seriously. She was always Rose in first class finding a poor bloke as a lover and dancing with the rabble in steerage. So now we're to believe that going into the countryside and living for a few weeks with a traveling tent circus will bring her nearly to the breaking point? That she will be so weakened she will take a lover not out of libidinous desire, but for protection? Um, no.
For much of the book there are two story-lines: Phrynie's circus investigation and Lt. Robinson's Melbourne murder. Obviously they were linked and it took until the last act of the book to bring them together. Some of the plot details were sketchy and there were also a few jarring perspective shifts in this one. The period and circus vs freaks research was flawless. I think Ms. Greenwood was so busy showing off her talents at meticulous detail, story and structure suffered.
Basically, Phryne lost her agency, just enough, and in such an unbelievably trivial (for her) way, it lost me. I get why Ms. Greenwood did it, but the reason Phryne broke was just too little. Phryne is a superhero. She's Bond. She's Nero Wolfe. She's flawed, but she doesn't break easily. I just didn't buy it and to be honest, I don't think Ms. Greenwood did either....more
In early 1928 England, bored, wealthy 28 year-old aristocrat Phryne Fisher (pronounced 'fry-nee') solves a minor mystery at a dinner when she finds a In early 1928 England, bored, wealthy 28 year-old aristocrat Phryne Fisher (pronounced 'fry-nee') solves a minor mystery at a dinner when she finds a stolen necklace. One of her fellow guests is impressed by her skill at deduction and asks her to solve a case for him in Australia. Phryne returns to her native land, solves the case and becomes a private detective. Taking Melbourne and the rest of Victoria by storm with her class, skills, flair and talent for continually doing scandalous things, she quickly builds up a group of friends and allies- everyone from a pair of Communist cab drivers to one of the few female doctors in the country- while solving her case.
I came to the book series because of the adapted Australian TV series, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. Several changes have been made from the books. Phryne is no ordinary aristocrat,she can fly a plane, drives her own car (a Hispano-Suiza), smokes, drinks, dances, has "friends in low places" and sometimes wears trousers. However, while displaying bohemian panache, she manages also to maintain style and class. Phryne is a hero, a female Bond or Saint, but with fewer product endorsements and a better class of lovers. She's an empowered female hero with agency and free as a male hero. She takes at least two lovers in each book, never looking back once he pulls his trousers on and walks out of her bedroom door. In book 5, she flies to a tiny village in the Australian Alps. She brings with her a change of clothes, her gun and her diaphragm (because, you just never know).
It's my belief that instead of being Kerry Greenwood's Mary Sue, Phryne deserves her place in the Wold Newton Family. Phryne is preternaturally intelligent, street-wise and strong. She's an expert with guns, knives (throwing and Apache-style fighting) and at judo. She can crack a safe with ease and disguise herself so even her closest allies won't recognize her. She's also a trained stunt and long-distance pilot with her own plane and trained racecar driver with her own (barely street legal) car. She deserves to be listed as an equal with others in the Wold Newton Family: Sherlock Holmes; Tarzan; Doc Savage; Lord Peter Wimsey, Bulldog Drummond; Fu Manchu The Shadow; Sam Spade; Nero Wolfe and Lew Archer.
Ms. Greenwood's writing gets better with each book. Her strengths are her amazing eye for detail and accurate period detail....more
You may believe it was Neil Gaiman's Sandman or Frank Miller's work on Daredevil, Wolverine or Batman or Alan Moore's work on Watchmen and From Hell, You may believe it was Neil Gaiman's Sandman or Frank Miller's work on Daredevil, Wolverine or Batman or Alan Moore's work on Watchmen and From Hell, but for me, Grant Morrison's run on the Doom Patrol was the most brilliant, imaginative, innovative, surreal and influential comics run of the Eighties and early Nineties. Sandman comes a very close second. Very close. ...more
I read A - H for the first time, last year. It's been almost a year since I checked into Kinsey Millhone - The Northern California PI, permanently stuI read A - H for the first time, last year. It's been almost a year since I checked into Kinsey Millhone - The Northern California PI, permanently stuck in the 1980s and forever preserved in her 30s. This is, so far, my favorite book in the series. The plot is more developed and the character of Kinsey is fleshed out a bit more. ...more
Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark. This is the fourth and, in my opinion, the best of the Alan Grofield series. Grofield is a gentleman thief wDonald Westlake writing as Richard Stark. This is the fourth and, in my opinion, the best of the Alan Grofield series. Grofield is a gentleman thief who sometimes helped out in Westlake's other hard-boiled series, Parker. It's 1970 and Alan Grofield has married and semi-retired to central Indiana, where he bought a 19th century farmhouse and barn. He and his wife use the barn to stage community theatre productions. At the beginning of Spring season, he finds himself strapped for cash, so he flies out to Vegas to meet with an acquaintance planning a heist out east (never plan anywhere near your target). The thing is, he's not very meticulous in his planning, and he doesn't mind a little bloodshed. Grofield and another man politely offer their no thank you's, and walk away. They really, really shouldn't have done that.
First published in 1971, this is a Hard Case Crime reissue. ...more
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