Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos by R. L. LaFevers: B-

August 26, 2010 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
“Frankly, I’m not fond of surprises, as ones around here tend to be rather wicked.”

For poor Theodosia, however, surprises abound. She spends most of her time at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities in London. There, all the artifacts that her parents dig up around the world are put on display and studied. But what her parents can’t see—and what Theodosia can—is the curses and black magic still attached to the ancient pieces. And it’s up to Theo to keep it all under control. Quite a task for an eleven-year-old girl!

Then Theo’s mother brings home the Heart of Egypt—a legendary amulet belonging to an ancient tomb. Theodosia’s skills will certainly be put to the test, for the curse attached to it is so vile and so black, it threatens to bring down the entire British Empire! Theodosia will have to call upon everything she’s ever learned in order to prevent the rising chaos from destroying her country—and herself!

Review:
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos is like a sandwich. You might assume I mean that it starts and ends strong but has a disappointing middle, but I actually mean just the opposite.

1906, London. Theodosia Throckmorton, age eleven, is cleverer than most. Her parents work at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities, specializing in Egyptian artifacts. Theodosia claims many of these items are cursed, though no one else ever notices this fact, and describes the spell preparations she uses to nullify the curses before they do any damage. For a while, I regarded her as an unreliable narrator because I couldn’t tell whether we were supposed to believe that this was all true or if it was all an elaborate game of make-believe devised by an intelligent, lonely girl; many of her spells involve rather mundane ingredients like bits of string, after all.

When confirmation of the existence of curses as well as Theodosia’s talent for detecting them comes from adults in The Brotherhood of the Chosen Keepers, I began to enjoy the story much more. She gets involved with the Brotherhood after tracking men whom she suspects of having stolen the valuable artifact the Heart of Egypt from her parents’ museum. It turns out that this artifact brings a curse upon the nation responsible for removing it from its tomb and that Germans facilitated its removal by Theodosia’s mother in order to bring chaos upon Britain. To forestall plagues, famine, and the like it must be returned to its original resting place. The whole middle section, in which Theodosia enlists the aid of her little brother and a pickpocket named Sticky Will to get back the Heart of Egypt is pretty entertaining, if improbable.

Alas, things take a turn for the ridiculous when the leader of The Brotherhood asks the eleven-year-old Theodosia to convince her parents to take her to Egypt so that she can put the Heart of Egypt back where it belongs. And she can’t tell them what’s up or have any backup, since all the other Brotherhood agents are injured or elsewhere. Nevermind that a group of murderous Germans wants it back or anything. The final few chapters are pretty tiresome, full of scenes of evading the bad guys and Theodosia reminding readers over and over of her assigned task. Everything wraps up exactly as one would expect, of course.

Another thing that bothered me a lot at first was the writing. A superfluous mention of “frocks and pinafores” gave off the distinctive aroma of “someone trying really hard to sound British,” so I checked and, yes, LaFevers is an American. After a while it ceased to bother me as much, but every time Theodosia said “smashing” I did cringe a bit inside.

I went from being dubious, to being pleased, to being rather bored throughout the course of this story. There are currently two more books in the series, with a fourth due out next spring, and at first I thought I wouldn’t bother with them, then I thought I would, and now I am not sure. There’s definitely a lot of potential here, but the execution is uneven. Perhaps what is needed is for Theodosia to have a team to work with; those parts were much more interesting than when she was alone. Now that she’s become an honorary member of the Brotherhood and grown closer to her brother, such an outcome seems possible. I suppose this means I’ve convinced myself to read at least one more and see how it goes.

More reviews of Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos can be found at Triple Take.

Filed Under: Books, Children's Fiction, Historical Fiction, Supernatural, Triple Take

Causing a Scene by Charlie Todd and Alex Scordelis: B-

August 21, 2010 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
From the infamous No Pants! Subway Ride to the legendary Grand Central Freeze, Improv Everywhere has been responsible for some of the most original and subversive pranks of the Internet age. In Causing a Scene, the group’s agents provide a hilarious firsthand account of their mischievous antics. Learn how they created a time loop in a Starbucks and gave Best Buy eighty extra employees. Join in on the fun with this irreverent, behind-the-scenes look at Improv Everywhere’s world-famous missions, and get inspired to create your own memorable mayhem.

Review:
I only discovered Improv Everywhere fairly recently, after an interview with its founder Charlie Todd was a featured video on CNN.com, and spent a couple of weeks devouring the entertaining mission reports on their website. I’ve never been a fan of pranks in which some unfortunate person is made to feel like an idiot, but Improv Everywhere isn’t like that at all. In Charlie Todd’s words,

We realized we had stumbled onto a new idea: pranks that didn’t need a victim… It was much more challenging to come up with ideas that actually gave the people we encountered a good experience—an amazing story they could tell for the rest of their lives.

After reading the various missions, I found myself recounting them to my friends and loved ones. I like best the ones where they make whole crowds of people extremely happy, like when a subway car full of strangers participates in a surprise birthday party for someone who’s about to get on or when seemingly unacquainted shoppers in the produce section of a grocery store suddenly burst into a choregraphed musical number about the lonely, segregated lives of fruit. Random acts of good-natured absurdity, in other words.

After exhausting the web content, this book seemed like the next logical place to turn. Alas, while I did learn some new things from reading it—I didn’t know, for example, that the Frozen Grand Central mission had inspired an episode of Law & Order—and while the mission reports have been wholly rewritten from posts on the site, I didn’t really take away anything new. The suggested agent assignments don’t offer anything of use; they basically tell you how to recreate the prank you’ve just read about, which you can pretty much figure out from having just read about it. The book has a number of editorial and printings errors, too.

Causing a Scene will probably be best enjoyed by those who have not explored the website, but honestly, I’d just advise everyone to go there instead. It offers a lot of fun feedback, as participating agents frequently leave comments, plus many color photos and videos. Todd promises that one can easily “procrastinate an entire week’s worth of work” there and I’m inclined to agree. Despite finding the book somewhat of a disappointment, I definitely remain a fan.

Filed Under: Books, Nonfiction

Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone by Margie Palatini: C

August 9, 2010 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
MEET ZOEY
Age: Eleven. Well, almost eleven. Backspace. Halfway to eleven.
Factoid: 198 days to sixth grade.
Problem: Coolability (see glossary inside).
Connect the dots: A bad hair situation… Growing earlobes…

WANTED:
1. A fairy godmother.
2. A molto chic makeover [molto = very in Italian].
3. A seat at the primo lunch table. [Primo is also Italian. It means best.]

THE SOLUTION:
Tune in!

Review:
Ten-year-old Zoey Zinevich is interested in all kinds of things, like big words, frogs, and presidential trivia. Mostly, though, she’s obsessed with the idea of achieving coolness by the start of sixth grade, and convinced that having better hair and the ability to accessorize like her popular classmates Brittany and Ashley will make her dreams come true. In this somewhat scatterbrained semi-journal, Zoey tells the story about how she managed to become cool without sacrificing her individuality.

It’s a decent message, but on the whole, I found the book to be annoying. Here are some possible reasons why.

1. I am way beyond the target age for this book. In fact, I am so old I could have given birth to someone old enough to babysit members of the intended audience.

2. Though I remember that prissy pretty girls were fairly abundant once I got to sixth grade and made me feel inadequate and schlubby, I still think it’s really sad that a ten-year-old is obsessing about her hair.

3. The writing style reminds me of my own pretentious high school journals, except where mine would devote a whole page to the word “gurg” or a drawing of a fish, Geek Chic employs the same technique using the word “Hair!” (with a spiky aura for emphasis). Palatini has many, many of these space-killing pages. At least this makes for an extremely quick read.

I don’t know. Maybe a geeky fifth-grader who’s insecure and wishing to be like everyone else might take something valuable away from this book. At my age, it’s the inherent charm of a children’s book that really gets me (see Betsy-Tacy), and that’s a quality in which Geek Chic is lacking.

More reviews of Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone can be found at Triple Take.

Filed Under: Books, Children's Fiction, Triple Take

Taliesin by Stephen R. Lawhead: C+

August 7, 2010 by 2 Comments

From the back cover:
It was a time of legend, when the last shadows of the mighty Roman conqueror faded from the captured Isle of Britain. While across a vast sea, bloody war shattered a peace that had flourished for two thousand years in the doomed kingdom of Atlantis.

Taliesin is the remarkable adventure of Charis, the Atlantean princess who escaped the terrible devastation of her homeland, and of the fabled seer and druid prince Taliesin, singer at the dawn of the age. It is the story of an incomparable love that joined two worlds amid the fires of chaos, and spawned the miracles of Merlin… and Arthur the king.

Review:
Oh man, I am old. I have owned this book—the whole of Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle, in fact—for at least twenty years. And yes, it has taken me that long to get around to reading it. Given that I’ve held onto this book for a couple of decades now, I really did want to like it, but I unfortunately found it rather boring.

In the beginning, the narrative alternates between Wales, where an unlucky prince named Elphin finds the babe Taliesin (pronounced Tallyéssin) in a salmon weir and raises him as his own, and Atlantis, where Princess Charis loses her mother in the opening skirmish of a war and spends seven years dancing in a bull ring until the prophecy of Atlantis’ doom comes true. Only a few ships’ worth of Atlanteans are saved, and by the time they claim a bit of Britain for themselves, Taliesin has become a respected bard and druid. (Note: while much is made regarding the beauty of Taliesin’s singing voice, no specifics are offered—I’m not even sure whether its register is specified—so it’s impossible to imagine what it sounds like.)

It takes a very, very long time for Taliesin and Charis to meet. Theirs is a destined love, which means they love each other on first sight and decide to get married pretty quickly. Oh, Charis mounts a token resistance because she knows her father will never agree to her marrying Taliesin, whom he regards as a barbarian, but fairly quickly decides to go through with it regardless of his wishes. Although we are told often that they love each other, I’m not exactly sure why they do. We are told that they talk often, but dialogue between them is actually rather sparse. Rather than two people in love, they’re treated more like pawns whose purpose is to beget Merlin. The same could be said for many characters in Arthurian legend, but in a 486-page book, I don’t think expecting more is unreasonable.

Near the end, Taliesin goes gaga for Jesus and begins talking up the “Savior God” everywhere he goes. It’s at this point that I understand why a quote on the back cover compares Lawhead to C. S. Lewis. Christianity undeniably plays a significant part in Arthurian legend—that whole Holy Grail business, for instance—but turning Taliesin into God’s fervent mouthpiece makes him less interesting.

In the end, despite my complaints, I intend to continue with the series. Perhaps as I encounter more characters with whom I’m familiar, I’ll begin to enjoy it more. And perhaps Merlin will not be as prone to religious zealotry as his father. Let us hope.

Filed Under: Books, Historical Fantasy

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris: B-

August 5, 2010 by 4 Comments

From the back cover:
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t get out much. Not because she’s not pretty. She is. It’s just that, well, Sookie has this sort of “disability.” She can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too datable. Then along comes Bill. He’s tall, dark, handsome—and Sookie can’t hear a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting for all her life…

But Bill has a disability of his own: he’s a vampire with a bad reputation. But he is an interesting addition to the town, and Sookie can’t help but listen to what everyone else thinks about Bill… especially since she’s starting to fall for the buff bloodsucker. But when a string of murders hits town—along with a gang of truly nasty vampires looking for Bill—Sookie wonders if having an undead boyfriend is such a bright idea.

And when one of her coworkers is killed, Sookie realizes that Bill and his friends may have some special plans for a woman who can read minds…

Review:
I’ve had the first few books in the Southern Vampire series for a long time, but ever since acquiring them I’ve had doubts about whether I’d actually like them. My doubts appeared justified when an attempt to watch an episode of True Blood, the HBO series based on the novels, ended in about five minutes. Still, I can usually tolerate “blood and boobies” (description credit to Felicia Day) better in print than on screen, so I thought I’d give the books a shot.

As most probably know by now, this is the story of Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress in small-town Bon Temps, Louisiana. Sookie is telepathic, which has made dating difficult, but when she meets vampire Bill Compton and cannot read his thoughts, she’s intrigued. Eventually they become a couple, but as Sookie learns more about Bill’s world she realizes that most vampires are quite unpleasant and that the hierarchy in their society means that Bill’s “superior,” Eric, can command her attendance as he chooses and there’s nothing Bill can do to prevent it.

Their relationship struggles play out against a rural backdrop that’s presently plagued by a string of murders for which Bill and Sookie’s brother, Jason, are individually suspected. This mystery fades into the background at times, but its resolution was a genuine surprise to me, though in retrospect it really shouldn’t have been. There is a good deal of sex once Sookie and Bill get together, but it stops short of being so explicit that it offends my prudish sensibilities.

As a Southerner, I can tell this book was written by “one of us.” Although I live in a fairly urban city, we’re surrounded by rural counties where the residents of Bon Temps would fit right in. I don’t live a life like these characters do, but I bet that some of my coworkers do.

Sookie herself strikes me as quite Southern in that she’s somewhat apathetic about her lack of education and go-nowhere job and extremely tolerant of some of Bill’s peculiar behavior. She’s got flaws—the adjectives vain, naïve, petulant, and complacent all describe her at one point or another—but she’s also got common sense and is resourceful in emergencies. Bill, so far, is kind of dull. The most interesting thing about him is that he became a vampire in the Civil War era, and so must try to get over some old-fashioned notions about women.

Ultimately, my feelings for this series are similar to those for the Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom series by Julie Kenner: there are things that bug me, and they’re not the greatest books on the planet, but I am still strongly compelled to keep reading them. Maybe one day I’ll even give True Blood another try.

Filed Under: Books, Supernatural Tagged With:

Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace: A

July 31, 2010 by 7 Comments

From the back cover:
There are lots of children on Hill Street, but no little girls Betsy’s age. So when a new family moves into the house across the street, Betsy hopes they will have a little girl she can play with. Sure enough, they do—a little girl named Tacy. And from the moment they meet at Betsy’s fifth birthday party, Betsy and Tacy become such good friends that everyone starts to think of them as one person—Betsy-Tacy.

Betsy and Tacy have lots of fun together. They make a playhouse from a piano box, have a sand store, and dress up and go calling. And one day, they come home to a wonderful surprise—a new friend named Tib.

Review:
Although I’ve been meaning to read the Betsy-Tacy series for several years, I didn’t really know what to expect. That is, I knew it was the story of two life-long friends, but I didn’t know that it would be written so fondly, so amusingly, or depict life as anything but rosy for these two girls.

Betsy Ray has no girls her age to play with until bashful Tacy Kelly moves in across the street. Tacy’s shyness prevents them from becoming friends immediately, but once they bond at Betsy’s fifth birthday party, they’re inseparable. A lot of the book is devoted to the various imaginative ideas they come up with to entertain themselves, whether it’s coloring sand to sell to other children or pretending to drive the family surrey to the exotic realm of… Milwaukee.

Much of the book is quite amusing, especially the stories Betsy makes up. I’m particularly fond of the one featuring a talking horse with a hankering for some doughnuts. I was pleasantly surprised when things took a more serious turn: Tacy is one of many children and the youngest, “Baby Bee,” dies after an illness. There’s a really wonderful scene where Betsy’s storytelling abilities help cheer Tacy up. Later, when Betsy is upset over the birth of a new, “perfectly unnecessary” sibling, Tacy takes up the role of comforter. It might not sound like much by way of drama, but both instances manage to be charming and a little bittersweet at the same time.

Betsy-Tacy would be a great book to read aloud to elementary students, particularly an audience comprised of girls. My brother and his fiancée need to hurry up and give me a niece so I can read this to her.

Filed Under: Books, Children's Fiction, Historical Fiction Tagged With:

Apollo 23 by Justin Richards: B

July 26, 2010 by 2 Comments

From the back cover:
An astronaut in full spacesuit appears out of thin air in a busy shopping centre. Maybe it’s a publicity stunt.

A photo shows a well-dressed woman in a red coat lying dead at the edge of a crater on the dark side of the moon—beside her beloved dog ‘Poochie.’ Maybe it’s a hoax.

But as the Doctor and Amy find out, these are just minor events in a sinister plan to take over every human being on Earth. The plot centres on a secret military base on the moon—that’s where Amy and the TARDIS are.

The Doctor is back on Earth, and without the TARDIS there’s no way he can get to the moon to save Amy and defeat the aliens.

Or is there? The Doctor discovers one last great secret that could save humanity: Apollo 23.

Review:
In the run of the Doctor Who: New Series Adventures books, this one comes in at number 37. At some point I’ll go back and read the earlier ones, but I’m really enjoying the new season with the eleventh doctor and couldn’t resist the temptation to check out the first book to feature him and his spunky Scottish companion, Amy.

I’m used to media tie-in books being fairly crappy, so Apollo 23 was a pleasant surprise. Oh, it’s not great literature or anything, but the characterization of Eleven and Amy is very solid, with dialogue that I can easily hear the actors delivering and several lines that elicit a grin. The basic plot is somewhat reminiscent of Dollhouse: there’s a secret base on the moon where experiments are being carried out on prisoners. The goal of the experiment is ostensibly to remove memories of bad experiences that led to criminal activity, but the technology winds up being used to create “Blanks” whose personalities are stored elsewhere while alien minds are imprinted upon them.

There’s more involving quantum links between Earth and the moon, but it’s really a sort of alien invasion/body snatchers story. The Doctor gets to zip around impressing people with his brilliance while Amy does a lot of snooping about. If this were an episode of the show, I’m sure it would be a disappointment, but in this format, it’s a quick and enjoyable read that might help ease the pain of the long wait ’til the Christmas special. I’ll be reading more!

Filed Under: Books, Media Tie-In, Sci-Fi Tagged With:

The Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold: B-

July 9, 2010 by Leave a Comment

From the front flap:
In a world where malices—remnants of ancient magic—can erupt with life-destroying power, only soldier-sorcerer Lakewalkers have mastered the ability to kill them. But Lakewalkers keep their uncanny secrets and themselves from the farmers they protect, so when patroller Dag Redwing Hickory rescued farmer girl Fawn Bluefield, neither expected to fall in love, join their lives in marriage, or defy both their kin to seek new solutions to the perilous split between their peoples.

Fawn and Dag see that their world is changing, and the traditional Lakewalker practices cannot hold every malice at bay forever. Yet for all the customs that the couple has challenged thus far, they will soon be confronted by a crisis exceeding their worst imaginings, one that threatens their Lakewalker and farmer followers alike. Now the pair must answer in earnest the question they’ve grappled with since they killed their first malice together: when the old traditions fail disastrously, can their untried new ways stand against their world’s deadliest foe?

Review:
If I didn’t like Dag and Fawn, The Sharing Knife: Horizon would be one of the most boring books I’ve ever read.

Having reached the end of their river voyage, Dag and Fawn pause long enough to witness the marriage of Whit and Berry before parting ways with Fawn’s brother and his new bride and heading to New Moon Cutoff, a Lakewalker camp where a renowned medicine maker, Arkady Waterbirch, lives. There, Dag finds an explanation for some of his abilities that is far more positive than the dark alternatives he’d been fearing and apprentices with the fastidious Arkady for several months.

Arkady is opposed to Dag practicing medicine on “farmers,” but when a child stricken with lockjaw needs his help, Dag goes willingly, knowing that he might be sacrificing the incredibly valuable apprenticeship as a result. The boy survives, but Dag’s actions throw New Moon camp into a tizzy so he decides to head back up north with newly pregnant Fawn rather than succumb to the restrictions the camp leader wants to oppose on him. A little way down the road, he’s joined by Arkady, staging his own protest against the leader’s decision.

Along the way they acquire various traveling companions—farmers and Lakewalkers both—until their party numbers more than two dozen. Dag fashions a trio of necklaces designed to help veil farmers’ grounds and protect them against malices. These are put to the test right at the end of the book when the party stumbles upon a particularly awful malice and Fawn (with help from Whit and Berry) proves again how resourceful and useful farmers can be if allowed to help. The implication is that the tale of this deed will spread far and wide and help foster a sense of cooperation between the two peoples.

Most of the book focuses on what Dag is learning and, true, it can be kind of interesting sometimes. Bujold has created an admirably consistent world for her characters to inhabit, so all of the detail about the healing techniques Dag is learning pretty much makes sense. It’s just that the narrative moves so slowly. I never do particularly well with a story whose whole plot is, “And then they walked a lot,” and that’s essentially what this book becomes in its second half.

Also, there’s too many characters at the end. Some of the new ones are interesting—I’m fond of Dag’s patroller niece, Sumac, and I can see why the half-Lakewalker siblings Calla and Indigo are important as a preview of what Dag and Fawn’s own children might be like—but many are nondescript. It’s easy to forget some of them are even there; I certainly did so more than once.

Ultimately, I did enjoy The Sharing Knife series and, though it’s easy to fault it for being too long and rambly, I don’t have any particular recommendations for how it could be made shorter.

Additional reviews of The Sharing Knife: Horizon can be found at Triple Take.

Filed Under: Books, Fantasy, Romance, Triple Take Tagged With:

The Laughing Cavalier by Baroness Orczy: B

June 22, 2010 by 2 Comments

From the back cover:
The year is 1623, the place Haarlem in the Netherlands. Diogenes—the first Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel’s ancestor—and his friends Pythagoras and Socrates defend justice and the royalist cause. The famous artist Frans Hals also makes an appearance in this historical adventure. Orczy maintains that Hals’ celebrated portrait of The Laughing Cavalier is actually a portrayal of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s ancestor.

Review:
What a perfectly abysmal blurb that is. Egads.

The Laughing Cavalier, one of two prequels to The Scarlet Pimpernel, tells the story of a penniless foreign adventurer who passed down his exceptional qualities—such as “careless insouciance”—to his descendant, Sir Percy Blakeney, the hero of the more famous work. This fellow, a half-English rogue enjoying the life of a vagabond in The Netherlands, goes by the name of Diogenes and has for companions/minions two fellows calling themselves Pythagorus and Socrates. When Gilda Beresteyn, sister of one man and former love of another who together conspire to kill the current ruler, overhears of these plans, Diogenes and his men are hired to spirit her away so that the assassination atttempt may proceed without her interference.

What follows is essentially a lot of what one would expect. Diogenes’ swaggering merriment (and, indeed, I ought to have counted the number of times his countenance, eyes, or laugh are described as “merry,” because the total would easily be in the triple digits) and saucy attitude make him the perfect adventure hero, capable of deftly handling many abrupt reversals in his fortunes. Gilda is the feisty and sensible noblewoman who is indignant at her plight at first but eventually comes to see that her captor is far more honorable than he originally seemed. The would-be traitor, Stoutenburg, is reduced to impotent fury by Diogenes’ constant smirking and eventually has his plans ruined and loses Gilda, whom he had planned to eventually woo back to his side.

As a story, the plot is not very deep or complicated. It takes fully one quarter of the book to simply arrange the details of the caper, making one antsy for Gilda to just get abducted already! Once she is, most of the rest of the book is comprised of simply moving her from place to place. The conclusion is fairly predictable, too. That the two leads end up together is neither a surprise nor a spoiler—this is a story leading to eventual parentage, after all—but it’s still fun to read their banter, even though Gilda’s sudden realization of her feelings comes rather out of the blue. I could very easily picture their relationship unfolding on screen—perhaps because it’s not exactly a new idea. (The Princess Bride comes to mind.)

I also really enjoyed the setting. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book taking place in The Netherlands before, so all the snowy landscapes, misty windmills, and icy rivers fit for nocturnal journeys on ice skates offered something new and different, even if the story itself did not. Also, there were tons of nifty Dutch honorifics and swear words! If you ever want to insult a Dutchman, apparently all you need do is call him a “plepshurk.”

In the end, I enjoyed The Laughing Cavalier and will read the follow-up volume, The First Sir Percy, at some point in the near future.

This review has been crossposted to the Triple Take blog, where K and I did a “double take.” You can find her review here.

Filed Under: Books, Historical Fiction, Triple Take Tagged With:

Striding Folly by Dorothy L. Sayers: A-

June 11, 2010 by 2 Comments

Book description:
Lord Peter Wimsey’s last three baffling cases all demonstrate his unique detection skills at their most spectacular. The enigma of a house numbered thirteen in a street of even numbers. An indignant child accused of theft. A dream about a game of chess that uncovers the true story behind a violent death. Each of the stories introduces a different side of the twentieth century’s most ingenious detective hero.

Review:
Short as it is, Striding Folly is still, by far, my very favorite of the Lord Peter short story collections.

Of the three stories collected herein, the title story is of the least consequence. It’s chiefly about a country gentleman who is suspected of killing a neighbor who planned to sell his land to developers. Lord Peter comes in at the end and prevents a miscarriage of justice. The title, incidentally, refers to the more tangible sort of folly, that is “a whimsical or extravagant structure built to serve as a conversation piece [or] lend interest to a view.” This one happens to be located on a property known as Striding. I had always thought it referred to a bit of foolishness engaged in while ambling about.

In “The Haunted Policeman” we get our first glimpse of Lord Peter since the events of Busman’s Honeymoon. It’s just over a year since his marriage to Harriet, and Peter has just passed a sleepless night while his wife gives birth to their first son. Once all is declared well, his spirits are high and he desires some conversation, even though it’s three in the morning. A passing policeman fits the bill and tells Peter the story of how he came to be accused of drunkenness by his sergeant. The tale involves a murdered man inside a house numbered thirteen on a street with only even-numbered residences. Again, Lord Peter serves as a force of vindication. Though the solution to the mystery is fairly ridiculous, the depiction of Peter is really excellent. I love the notion that, when fretting especially about Harriet, he takes solace in the company of the servants, who allow him to polish the silver.

The second charmer in the collection is “Talboys.” A further six years have passed since the previous story and Peter and Harriet’s family has grown to contain three sons. The eldest, Bredon, confesses at the outset to having stolen two peaches from a neighbor. Peter punishes him and the matter is considered closed until the following morning, when all of the peaches are discovered missing. A visiting houseguest—friend to Peter’s notoriously censorious sister-in-law—persists in suspecting Bredon while Peter rather easily proves his innocence. Again, the mystery is not really the point here. Instead we get a truly wonderful portrait of Peter as father—always willing to have a roll with the dog, let his children clamber all over him, and participate in mischief. I might wish for more emphasis on Harriet in this situation, but her happiness is never in doubt.

Of all the Lord Peter stories, only these last two have ever tempted me to come back and read them again. I had wondered how any short story could provide a sense of closure to the Wimsey series, but in fact it works perfectly, since little time and effort need be expended upon a mystery which is only of secondary importance. I will probably end up reading Thrones, Dominations in the near future but I certainly see the rationale behind stopping here, too.

Filed Under: Books, Mystery, Short Stories Tagged With:
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