Another book, bought because I understood it to contain an impossible crime, which has been left lingering on my TBR because it’s a later entry in a series I’ve not otherwise read. More than that, this is a continuation novel, so not even by the series’ original author.

I’m starting to think that I should listen to my instincts more. Last week I read a novelisation from the TV show Psych (2006-14) that I’d been putting off, and the book was pretty bad and so I’m happy I hadn’t previously wasted time on the televised version. This week, I’ve been putting off McNally’s Folly (2000) by Vincent Lardo because I honestly just couldn’t summon the enthusiasm for it for no particular reason, and having fought my way through most of it I’m not even sure if I’ve read anything. This is almost the equivalent of a book being printed with entirely blank pages, except that a book with entirely blank pages would be more fun, because you could draw a happy bee flying from flower to flower in it.

Archie McNally, a sort of investigator for his lawyer father having dropped out of Yale, is basically every early-2000s sort-of private eye: he quips, he’s snarky, he knows everyone, everyone knows him, he has a Mickey Mouse watch in case you thought the wealth an opulence that surrounds him makes him supercilious…he’s Myron Bolitar and Elvis Cole and every other protagonist of that ilk rolled into one and not even vaguely disguised because that was what people — myself included — wanted to read back then. And, my god, the detail with which food is described herein makes it clear someone read Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels and failed to realise that you typically also have to include a plot, an interesting protagonist, and some actual investigating:

Ursi, our cook-housekeeper, fed us scallops sautéed in a mixture of garlic-scented olive oil and clarified butter, accompanied by porcini risotto and steamed sugar snap peas with lemon zest. The lord of the manor uncorked a fine bottle of muscadet to go with the repast. Dessert was a ripened honeydew whose time had come, along with a plate of crisp cat’s tongue wafers tipped with melted Valhrona chocolate.

The essential plot here sees a man thinking his fiancée is being fleeced by a spiritualist — let’s not waste each other’s time by calling him a “sham spiritualist”, they’re all fakers in real life and fiction and should be locked up with no chance of parole — and, yeah, she is. So Archie attends a reading, is made the focus of the faker’s attention, and spends a huge amount of time meeting people he already knows to ask about it, only for them to have already heard of the events and direct him on to someone else he already knows who had also already heard about it and directs him on to someone else he already knows and has also already heard about it.

Also, there’s a production of Arsenic and Old Lace (1941) being put on — and the most interesting thing about this entire book is that I’m not sure how to communicate typographically that it’s a play: in my mind putting the title in italics makes it a film or a T.V. show, and putting single quote marks around it makes it a short story or T.V. episode. You’ll recognise from the date that it can’t possibly be the wonderful film, of course, but then you probably don’t trust me not to have made a mistake there. Well, I didn’t. Anyway, it’s a play they’re putting on, and someone is poisoned at the rehearsals after drinking from a cup that others have drunk from and not been poisoned — this being the motivation to pick up the book in the first place, it having earned the book an entry in Skupin.

Alas, I’m not sure it’s a true impossibility, though I’ll admit I’m vague on it because I was skipping ahead by this point, but even then it’s not terribly baffling, and nearly this exact setup and solution had been done in a short story which preceded this by a couple of years, I think. Plus, a similar setup has been done with a far better answer — indeed, a completely original answer — elsewhere. Er, what happens then? More conversation. Some Secrets of the Wealthy Leak Out and, gasp, Not All Is What It Seems in This Enclave of Respectability. My pearls!

And — sorry, but it bears repeating — my god, the food in this novel of detection:

The day’s special was our favorite grilled grouper sandwich on Italian ciabatta with spicy sweet potato fries and homemade ketchup. This came with a salad of Bibb lettuce, avocado slices, paper-thin slices of red onion and a sun-dried tomato vinaigrette.

Look, I’m sure this can’t all be Vincent Lardo’s fault, since he’s only following in the footsteps of Lawrence Sanders’s original series, but, yeesh, this is some derivative stuff that failed to ignite a spark of interest for even a single sentence, and fairly amazes me that there was an appetite for more of this sort of stuff following Sanders’s death. Honestly, I wouldn’t even bother writing it up (I don’t like ragging on books as much as some of you seem to think I do…) but I’m close to a deadline here and don’t have the time to read anything else to replace it. And, hey, maybe this will save someone the experience of wading through this reheating of a series of knock-offs and instead give you time to enjoy something good in your life.

Y’know what? Let’s just quit here. I started this blog with the hope of bringing good books into people’s lives and interesting conversation into mine, and now I’ve got this off my chest I don’t even have to will to try and tie this up like normal. I hope you’re having a better day.