{"id":291,"date":"2004-09-18T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2004-09-18T18:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=291"},"modified":"2004-09-18T14:00:20","modified_gmt":"2004-09-18T18:00:20","slug":"sayers_dorothy_8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2004\/09\/sayers_dorothy_8\/","title":{"rendered":"Sayers, Dorothy L.: (06) Strong Poison [2004 read]; (07) The Five Red Herrings"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

My Sayers re-read has stalled out after the next two in the series, Strong Poison<\/cite> and The Five Red Herrings<\/cite><\/strong>. I’ve logged Strong Poison<\/cite><\/a> fairly recently, so I’ll just say that in spite of its flaws, I will forever adore it for the seance bits, the lock-picking bits, and for not<\/em> marrying off Peter and Harriet at the end, because what a disaster that<\/em> would have been.<\/p>\n

The Five Red Herrings<\/cite>, however, I just do not care about. Harriet is not to be seen or even heard of; instead we get a (nearly) emotion-free venture for Peter into a positive orgy of timetables, and I just<\/em> don’t<\/em> care<\/em>. Timetable mysteries aren’t my favorite anyway, but this is such whiplash after Strong Poison<\/cite>, and such a step back in terms of Peter’s development as a character, that I can not think well of it.<\/p>\n

Also, there is an egregious<\/em> trick early in the book, where Peter tells the police a critical deduction, and instead of the conversation, the reader is given an otherwise-blank page with a note at the top: ” . . . as the intelligent reader will readily supply these details for himself, they are omitted from this page.”<\/p>\n

I have never thrown a book at the wall. I do not expect to ever throw a book at the wall. But sometimes I read a line and my hands twitch convulsively, without conscious direction, as though they’d really like to get this book away from them. (If I were Vlad Taltos, this would be when Loiosh says, “Can I eat him, boss?”) The Five Red Herrings<\/cite> came very close to leaping away from me when I read that line.<\/p>\n

Have His Carcase<\/cite> is next, which is why I’m stalled on the re-read; yes, it has Harriet, but I recall it as being extremely long, dreary, and contrived. Maybe I’m wrong; Truepenny had a lot to say about it in her series of Sayers posts<\/a> (warning: huge spoilers in all of those posts). But it’s hard to work up the enthusiasm for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Sayers re-read has stalled out after the next two in the series, Strong Poison and The Five Red Herrings. I’ve logged Strong Poison fairly recently, so I’ll just say that in spite of its flaws, I will forever adore it for the seance bits, the lock-picking bits, and for not marrying off Peter and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sayers, Dorothy L.: (06) Strong Poison [2004 read]; (07) The Five Red Herrings”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,6,34],"tags":[372],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-mystery","category-wimseyvane","tag-sayers-dorothy-l"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}