If you’ve met me, firstly I apologise, and secondly it’ll come as no surprise that I have a tendency to ruminate on that which many others pass over without so much as a backward glance. Previously this resulted in me writing something in the region of 25,000 words on the Knox Decalogue, and today I’m going to turn my eye upon the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones list. Prepare thyself…
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On page 110 of 355 of Elizabeth C. Bunce’s Premeditated Myrtle (2020) we learn that 12 year-old Myrtle Hardcastle starts reading novels in the middle because “beginnings were often boring”. Thankfully the unproved murder on which the entire book to that point has hung is finally suspected a few pages later and the book comes to life at last, but there’s an uncomfortably meta air to the criticism at the time.
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“Can you call it homicide if the victim is a hippo?” asks the back cover of this first entry in Stuart Gibbs’ FunJungle series and, from a purely Latin perspective, no you can’t. However, the brilliance of Gibbs’ endeavour here is how much he adheres to the fundamental form of the murder mystery despite this core difference.
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The only frustration I feel towards the Adventures on Trains series by M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman is that I didn’t discover it sooner. Because, see, then I’d be four books deep into this wonderful, charming, clever series — with a fifth on the way soon — rather than the mere two I am.
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The end of the Knox Decalogue is in sight! This week it’s Watsons, next week it’s Twins, and then — oh no! — there’s a final Tuesday in the month that I have to fill with something. A flashy dance routine, perhaps?
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The companion of the fictional detective — the “stupid friend” as Ronald Knox styled them — is something I have spent far too long thinking about, mainly because the protoype is always taken to be Sherlock Holmes’ chronicler Dr. John H. Watson. Joining me this week to discuss why that might not always be a good comparison to draw is Caroline Crampton of the superb Shedunnit podcast.
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Sometimes I plan ahead — c.f. a review of a novel by R. Austin Freeman in the same week as a podcast episode about R. Austin Freeman — and sometimes I really should. Rest assured, it will haunt me for years that I didn’t review this updating of the Holmes/Watson dynamic in the same week as Anthony Boucher’s The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940).
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The mystery for younger readers I reviewed last week was big on world and short on plot; this week, we redress that balance.
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Last week, I wasn’t expecting a Christmas mystery and arguably didn’t get one; but for the week of Christmas itself I wanted to be on firmer ground.
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At the risk of appearing to stoke the thoroughly-raked embers of the “Is Die Hard (1988) a Christmas movie?” conversation — it’s not, by the way — how much Christmas should appear in your mystery in order for it to be considered a Christmas Mystery?
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The Invisible Event 