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Apr. 28th, 2011 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIf you like country-house mysteries and amateur detectives and vaguely posh 1920's young men wandering around being witty and British at each other, A. A. Milne's The Red House Mystery is likely to be a good comfort read for you. The book goes mostly like this:
PLOT: Someone's MYSTERIOUS LONG-LOST BROTHER is DEAD at a COUNTRY-HOUSE PARTY!
TONY: I am an implausibly brilliant, independently wealthy, and vaguely posh young man who enjoys wandering around pretending to be things for the lulz. Yesterday I was a waiter! Now I feel like trying something new, but meanwhile I happen to be in town and will pop in on my friend Bill at his friend's party.
BILL: I am a less brilliant but also independently wealthy and vaguely posh young man who happens to be a guest at this country-house party where someone is dead! Hello, Tony, long time no see.
TONY: Oh awesome, I will be a detective! PERFECT, I love Sherlock Holmes. Bill, will you be my Watson?
BILL: Sure, sounds like fun!
(RAYMOND CHANDLER, FROM THE FUTURE: Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Dude, I don't understand why the police don't just knock you guys on the head and drag you off the scene of the crime right now.)
And then Tony and Bill pack the rest of the country-house guests off to the city, never to be seen for the rest of the book, and wander around investigating the mystery entirely for the lulz. Occasionally they feel a bit guilty about this but not very much. And sometimes Tony will detect something obvious and Bill will say "right on, Tony, explain it to me!" and Tony will say "Haha, Bill, you're so great at playing Watson! I love this game!" and Bill will say "uh, no, Tony, I seriously do need it explained to me," and then Tony will make Bill go dive in a lake or something for being the less-brilliant one. (If I were Bill I would probably be extremely frustrated with Tony. Then again I sort of want to smack Tony a lot anyways, oh well.) Honestly the book walks a very fine line between being a super-formulaic cozy English mystery novel and being a meta parody of itself, and I think that's intentional but I'm not quite sure. It's thoroughly entertaining though, if you like that sort of thing. Alternately, you might find it so frustrating you write an entire essay about how the whole cozy-English-mystery genre could die and you would cheerfully jump up and down on its grave, like Raymond Chandler, which I guess is fine too!
PLOT: Someone's MYSTERIOUS LONG-LOST BROTHER is DEAD at a COUNTRY-HOUSE PARTY!
TONY: I am an implausibly brilliant, independently wealthy, and vaguely posh young man who enjoys wandering around pretending to be things for the lulz. Yesterday I was a waiter! Now I feel like trying something new, but meanwhile I happen to be in town and will pop in on my friend Bill at his friend's party.
BILL: I am a less brilliant but also independently wealthy and vaguely posh young man who happens to be a guest at this country-house party where someone is dead! Hello, Tony, long time no see.
TONY: Oh awesome, I will be a detective! PERFECT, I love Sherlock Holmes. Bill, will you be my Watson?
BILL: Sure, sounds like fun!
(RAYMOND CHANDLER, FROM THE FUTURE: Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Dude, I don't understand why the police don't just knock you guys on the head and drag you off the scene of the crime right now.)
And then Tony and Bill pack the rest of the country-house guests off to the city, never to be seen for the rest of the book, and wander around investigating the mystery entirely for the lulz. Occasionally they feel a bit guilty about this but not very much. And sometimes Tony will detect something obvious and Bill will say "right on, Tony, explain it to me!" and Tony will say "Haha, Bill, you're so great at playing Watson! I love this game!" and Bill will say "uh, no, Tony, I seriously do need it explained to me," and then Tony will make Bill go dive in a lake or something for being the less-brilliant one. (If I were Bill I would probably be extremely frustrated with Tony. Then again I sort of want to smack Tony a lot anyways, oh well.) Honestly the book walks a very fine line between being a super-formulaic cozy English mystery novel and being a meta parody of itself, and I think that's intentional but I'm not quite sure. It's thoroughly entertaining though, if you like that sort of thing. Alternately, you might find it so frustrating you write an entire essay about how the whole cozy-English-mystery genre could die and you would cheerfully jump up and down on its grave, like Raymond Chandler, which I guess is fine too!
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Date: 2011-05-03 05:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-03 01:57 pm (UTC)