This was the first time I have read anything by Agatha Christie, and I enjoyed myself. My class has been studying Victorian mystery literature, so having a more modern text was a welcome change. Not that I’m denouncing Victorian literature, but sometimes all of the excusing and posturing and what was and wasn’t acceptable can get rather tiresome.
I didn’t realize that Christie wrote so recently (she died only in 1974), so while it wasn’t exactly completely new material, it was nice to hear mention of cars and telephones in a novel for a change.
I can’t say too much about the book without ruining the twist ending – and it is quite an interesting twist – but I have to say, and I don’t know if it’s my problem or a comment on the material, but I had a hard time keeping the details of the book in my head. I would read a few chapters, put the book down, pick it up a day later and have a hard time remembering that which I’d read the time before. I don’t normally have that problem – at least not so pronounced – but I hesitate to blame it on the book, ‘cause it’s not as if the book was boring.
Rather, the construction of the story was quite good, and I did enjoy it. I hesitate to say any more without spoiling the book, but overall the characters were enjoyable and it was interesting to view the detective from a more removed outsider than I had with Watson’s viewing of Holmes.
Speaking of whom…
The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
This novella completed our mini-compendium of Sherlock Holmes tales. In class, we covered eight short stories (if memory serves, the first short story ever written onwards, more or less – conversely, the third story in which Holmes ever appears), and the Hound was the first story written after Holmes had been killed off; at least, according to my professor.
Anyhow, this story was one I’d read years ago as a child, and it was the condensed children’s version – with illustrations! – but I didn’t remember much of it at all. The only problem I had with the version I read this time around, and it was the same problem I had with The Moonstone, is that there was a great deal of it that was annotated. In most cases, this meant that it was explaining various bits of slang, news references, or references to items that we might have around anymore. Fair enough. What I had a problem with was when it made reference to clues or bits of information that Conan Doyle (or Collins) took out of the text. The notes at the back of the book sometimes provided hints that I would not have otherwise gotten (such as, “the person in the dogcart, based on the description, obviously had to be so-and-so”) and I found that somewhat frustrating. I have confidence in my own intelligence, suspicions and ability to reason, so I would have preferred to piece things together on my own.
Nonetheless, the story itself is quite interesting. It never ceases to amaze me how mystery authors can present the crime, most of the clues, and the suspicions of the detective(s) in the first portion of the book, then spend the next hundred pages, numerous chapters or number of “days” (for example, the crime in The Moonstone took over a year before it was solved) adding minor details here and there, fleshing out suspicions and concepts, before the crime itself is solved.
In the case of The Hound of the Baskervilles, the reader is absorbed with trying to determine whether or not the rumored hound truly is supernatural or even an actual fact. In addition, the reader is caught up in wondering how it was that other Baskervilles have been killed, and whether the current one – the heir of the family manor – will be next… and if so, when.
It’s not the most suspenseful book I’ve ever read, but it was a good one. I happen to have a compendium of Sherlock Holmes stories, I believe it is all of the Holmes stories, and I look forward to reading them. Conan Doyle knows how to move a story along, and he has a quick wit about him. Holmes isn’t a perfect figure; he can be arrogant and he is addicted to drugs, and it’s nice to see flaws in such an otherwise unshakeable character.
Basket Case, by Carl Hiaasen
Continuing my trend of Carl Hiaasen novels (I’m currently reading Strip Tease, which was turned into a rather bad movie featuring Demi Moore, Ving Rhames and Burt Reynolds), I finished off Basket Case a few days ago.
I commented last time that there appeared to be a trend of sorts in Hiaasen’s novels, at least of the two I’d read up until then; this novel helped to break that trend. Basket Case has as its main character an obituary columnist who delights in tormenting his editor and scheming ways to get back onto the front pages, where he had originally been before insulting the owner of the newspaper.
The book deals with the apparently accidental death of a washed-up rock star, someone familiar to the generation to which the protagonist, Jack Taggart, belongs. As he studies the circumstances and the widow more carefully, Taggart realizes there is more to the story than just a simple death, and he pries.
The story is written with Hiaasen’s increasingly familiar eye to humor and entertainment, and if death is something that turns you off, this one is a safer read than the others I’ve covered; there are only three or four deaths (I can’t give an exact number without spoiling one of the mysteries) and they’re not described graphically at all.
Hiaasen’s characters are fun to read, because they’re written as real people with real quirks and foibles. People have flaws, they have oddities, but they’re still fun to read about. For the most part, his characters are written fairly much along the “good” or “bad” axis – it’s easy to pick the good guys from the bad, at least in this story – but sometimes his characters aren’t so easily classified (as in the past two novels of his I’ve read). The reader can feel sympathy for the character in question, and understand why he or she may be doing what he or she is doing, but not agree with the methods.
Overall, once again I’d classify this one as a good beach read, and the plot is certainly not difficult to follow; I didn’t have the problem of losing particulars of the story in between readings. Certainly a book worth picking up, as any of the others I have written about today are.
posted by Jen on 3:08 PM
