Sherlock Holmes and the Victorian tropes
Sep. 12th, 2014 07:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katestineI don't remember when Laurie King's The Game got on my list. I'd heard intriguing things about her Sherlock Holmes-retires-to-Sussex-to-raise-bees series and The Game takes the detective to India, where he participates in the Great Game and rescues Kim. Yaay mashups! Except the series/book is terrible, a total Mary Sue, wherein the famously reclusive detective takes an interest in, trains, and eventually marries a young girl who lives nearby. She's just the pluckiest girl-detective evuh, with men falling at her feet and dropping clues. ugh. Apparently the following book in the series involves Gilbert & Sullivan. ugh. Just ugh. I can't believe she sold any books, let alone more than one, and I wish she'd given her characters different names.
After I finished, I realized I could just read Kipling's Kim, which doesn't have the great detective, but is generally considered one of the classic adventure tales. It lived up to its reputation, although it was about a third too long and I got antsy toward the end. I bet the Edwardian young boys ate that stuff up though and I can't wait to read some of his shorter stories to my son and nephew. I feel funny about how interested I became in (visiting) India after reading it though: I sort of wanted to mention this to my Indian former colleagues, but didn't.
Stick recommended Lyndsay Faye's Dust and Shadow, which is Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper. Faye gets the tone right and there's a lot to enjoy, despite the non-Doyleish touches, e.g. important female character, extensive use of the Irregulars, Faye's choice of villain and denouement.
Jon mentioned that they'd figure out who Jack the Ripper was. I went and read all the news stories and they really haven't. Some dude saw From Hell, bought a shawl of doubtful provenance, found someone to do some mitochondrial DNA tests (which didn't eliminate the guy he accused), and is now promoting his book in the Daily Mail, which proves exactly nothing. augh. I then read the entire list of suspects on Wikipedia and y'know what? We really have no fucking clue who did it. Only two of the guys seem to have had opportunity: e.g. Walter Sickert, the artist who occasionally gets accused of being part of the royalist conspiracy, was in freakin' France the night of more than one of the murders, but is still considered a "suspect". WTF?
After I finished, I realized I could just read Kipling's Kim, which doesn't have the great detective, but is generally considered one of the classic adventure tales. It lived up to its reputation, although it was about a third too long and I got antsy toward the end. I bet the Edwardian young boys ate that stuff up though and I can't wait to read some of his shorter stories to my son and nephew. I feel funny about how interested I became in (visiting) India after reading it though: I sort of wanted to mention this to my Indian former colleagues, but didn't.
Stick recommended Lyndsay Faye's Dust and Shadow, which is Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper. Faye gets the tone right and there's a lot to enjoy, despite the non-Doyleish touches, e.g. important female character, extensive use of the Irregulars, Faye's choice of villain and denouement.
Jon mentioned that they'd figure out who Jack the Ripper was. I went and read all the news stories and they really haven't. Some dude saw From Hell, bought a shawl of doubtful provenance, found someone to do some mitochondrial DNA tests (which didn't eliminate the guy he accused), and is now promoting his book in the Daily Mail, which proves exactly nothing. augh. I then read the entire list of suspects on Wikipedia and y'know what? We really have no fucking clue who did it. Only two of the guys seem to have had opportunity: e.g. Walter Sickert, the artist who occasionally gets accused of being part of the royalist conspiracy, was in freakin' France the night of more than one of the murders, but is still considered a "suspect". WTF?
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(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-19 12:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-19 07:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-19 11:14 pm (UTC)Then you read the Kipling novella.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-19 01:18 pm (UTC)And speaking of Chabon, you might also like The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which is Jewish-themed, near future, alt history detective noir. It might be my favorite good-for-you litfic that I've read in the past year.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-19 08:33 pm (UTC)You didn't say THAT when we discussed the book previously: I'd discounted your comments bc I don't love detective noir as much as you do. It's just coincidence that I keep writing mystery genre book reviews.
Also, I don't remember ever discussing The Final Solution. And if you'd told me it was <200 pages, I definitely would've read it sooner - some of us are in danger of falling behind the 100 books/year goal.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-19 04:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-09-19 08:00 pm (UTC)That, and I'm currently listening to a book where the characters have an orgy that is so delicately described, I had to confirm with Jon that it was an orgy, even though a couple of pages later, they use the word orgy.
But at least it's nice to know where Laurie King started.