Over at the excellent and superbly-titled Exploring the History of Women in Mystery blog, wrangler “Unpredictable Notes” recently put up this brief summary of the EIRF school as outlined in Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor’s A Catalogue of Crime (1971). EIRF is a step on from HIBK (Had I But Known) and stands for Everything is Rather Frightening:
In fact, since the modern psychological novel has devoted itself to exploring the abnormal and oddly alarming, no great originality was needed to raise the emotional pitch of the murder another notch and made HIBK into EIRF – Everything is Rather Frightening.
Cool, thanks JJ – never read a thing by them but you make a darn good case 🙂
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Would you put your next book A Puzzle For Fools in EIRF category ?
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That’s an excellent question. Upon a lot of reflection, I don’t think I would because of how the investigation develops: without wishing to spoil anything, there’s a point where the ‘detective’ begins to make plans to seek out the killer — activiely taking on the role of pursuit, and so deliberately insinutaing themself into the killer’s path.
My (nascent) feeling on EIRF is that the solution come about more as a moment of sudden realisation than by any deliberate intention — the prosepct of pursuit is simply too frightening to consider. Once that decision is made to adopt counter-measures to comabt and find the responsible party I think a book steps out of the EIRF form. Perhaps.
Dunno, what does anyone esle think?
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Great review JJ, been meaning to return to these two writers. This book certainly sounds intriguing and in terms of suspense made me think of Ethel Lina White’s Some Must Watch. I have a couple of her books in my TBR pile so I’ll have to see whether she also fits the EIRF category.
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‘Suspense’ is definitely the key aspect here, yeah. I wondered if there was an element of sensation fiction in this school, too, but I don’t have the experience of it to be able to judge. You’ve read far more of that than I have…whaddaya think?
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hmm that is a good question (and by that I mean a tricky one!). Gut reaction would be to say no, based on the details mentioned in your review. Things like gothic, HIBK, Sensation Fiction and now EIRF do sometimes appear very similar due to the suspense and thrills they raise and the female protagonists. But looking at the nuts and blots of each genre I think there are different things going on in sensation fiction. For example, the female protagonists in sensation fiction can often be culpable or transgressive in some way, whereas the female protagonist here is more in the position of helpless heroine or heroine in peril. You can get helpless nit wits in sensation fiction but they’re not used in the same way, often lacking the agency to do anything about their situations.
Of course I’d need to read the book to put completely sure but this is a long winded off the cuff answer.
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I mean, my interpretation of EIRF could be wrong, too. No-one has told me I’m a mile off, but that doesn’t mean I’m right!
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Is it me or are the stars not appearing? I’m presuming this title got at least a few stars? 😛
Anyway, this was the title you recommended me when I was seeking to try something out by the Littles… And I enjoyed it – enough to purchase ‘Black Eye’ after that. 🙂 It was better clued than I thought it would be.
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No stars because it’s not a review — possibly I’m splotting hairs, but I’m mainly considering this from the perspective of EIRF than giving an overall summary (plotting, characters, solution, clewing, etc). Perhaps no-one else recognises the difference, though, so clearly I’m failing at something somewhere 🙂
Did I specfifically recommend this one? Bold of me, considering I hadn’t read it…
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JJ, I always love your typos. My goal is to splot hairs at least once a day for the rest of the year! 🙂
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I had to go back and check – but you did recommend ‘Black Rustle’, saying that you would be re-reading it soon…! 😛
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Hmmm, well I apologise for misleading you with that “re-” prefix. I’ll keep a closer eye on what I’m typing in future to avoid any such…well…lies 🙂
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No worries, I quite enjoyed it! 🙂
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