I promise I’m not soapboxing and I promise I’m not going to shove down your throat every good cause that I come across, but I wanted to highlight that Waterstones’ Buy Books for Syria initiative starts in the UK today. Effectively, you buy a qualifying book from a Waterstones store and the full price goes to Oxfam for them to put to use in their efforts to help those people fleeing the conflict in Syria.
Having seen first-hand some of those affected while in Greece this summer, the sheer scale of this crisis really does dwarf any attempt at a rational or an intelligent response. It is tempting and entirely understandable to feel helpless and ineffective in the face of such magnitudes of pain and sorrow, and to therefore not feel that anything you can do – puny old you, all on your own – will make any difference at all. If something like this will help give people a way to feel less bewildered, and so incentivise them into contributing, surely it must be a good thing.
It is very difficult for me to explain the influence that this woman’s writing has had on me over the last 15 or so years. Since I’m neither famous nor important no-one will be that interested, either, so I shall not try. I’m going to leave it up to you, the discerning reader – if you understand, you understand – but I wanted to at least mark the occasion.
I’m a huge fan of classic crime fiction – of Leo Bruce, John Dickson Carr, Agatha Chrisite, Edmund Crispin, and others – as well as a handful of contemporary authors and a confusing mix of SF. I’m not even slightly sold on Gladys Mitchell, think G.K. Chesterton too verbose and don’t really get along with Dorothy L. Sayers, just so there’s full disclosure from the outset.
My particular passion is locked room mysteries – Anthony Boucher, John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson, Paul Halter, Rupert Penny, John Sladek, Derek Smith, Hake Talbot, etc – and I have gone and will go to quite absurd lengths to track down anything in that classic mould.
This blog is an attempt to provoke some conversation in an area I love; I’ve sat back and watched other people doing it and now fancy a try myself. I’m not at all sure quite what form it will take (my current guess is book reviews) or whether anyone will even notice me in these crowded fields, but I want to give it a go and see what happens.
I’d say watch this space, but even I’m not deluded enough to imagine that anyone is watching at this stage…
The Invisible Event 