(no subject)
Sep. 19th, 2013 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo my dad gave me his copy of a mystery called Full Dark House to read at least a year or two ago, and I didn't fully understand why until I started to read it recently and realized it was just literally the British crime thriller Blitz-era version of The Phantom of the Opera.
Now, I will admit I have compared a lot of things to The Phantom of the Opera in my time, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Phantom of the Opera! WITH OCEAN SCIENCE) and Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark (Phantom of the Opera! WITH INEXPLICABLE ARACHNID GODDESSES.) But I think when a plot kicks off with a ballet dancer getting poisoned and having her feet sawed off by a SINISTER FIGURE IN AN OPERA HOUSE, followed by various other cast members being bloodily beaned by various other bits of scenery, it is pretty safe to say it is somewhat Phantom-inspired.
. . . that is actually only half the plot of the book; the frame sequence involves a team of sad old detectives, and one of them dies in the first chapter, and his partner decides that his death has something to do with their case, i.e. the Phantom of the Blitz Opera.
In the true spirit of Phantom, I suppose, everything to do with the Phantom case is extremely Gothic, vaguely misogynistic and ablist, and deeply inexplicable. My favorite part is when our genius hero decides that he has had a brilliant revelation about the ~TRUE PSYCHOLOGICAL SYMBOLIC MEANING~ of the case, and goes and confronts the supposed culprit, a GREEK TYCOON, with the fact that he is killing people in SYMBOLIC WAYS related to the MUSES as a SACRIFICE to the GODS and the suspect is like "lol . . . no . . .?"
(I forget whether the symbolic Muses revelation actually turned out to have anything to do with the solution of the case, but either way it made no sense.)
Anyway I think if it comes down to it I would probably rather have been rereading THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA: WITH OCEAN SCIENCE, but I do now find myself really curious about Orphee aux enfers, the scandalous opera that everyone is attempting to put on when not being attacked by scenery.
Now, I will admit I have compared a lot of things to The Phantom of the Opera in my time, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Phantom of the Opera! WITH OCEAN SCIENCE) and Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark (Phantom of the Opera! WITH INEXPLICABLE ARACHNID GODDESSES.) But I think when a plot kicks off with a ballet dancer getting poisoned and having her feet sawed off by a SINISTER FIGURE IN AN OPERA HOUSE, followed by various other cast members being bloodily beaned by various other bits of scenery, it is pretty safe to say it is somewhat Phantom-inspired.
. . . that is actually only half the plot of the book; the frame sequence involves a team of sad old detectives, and one of them dies in the first chapter, and his partner decides that his death has something to do with their case, i.e. the Phantom of the Blitz Opera.
In the true spirit of Phantom, I suppose, everything to do with the Phantom case is extremely Gothic, vaguely misogynistic and ablist, and deeply inexplicable. My favorite part is when our genius hero decides that he has had a brilliant revelation about the ~TRUE PSYCHOLOGICAL SYMBOLIC MEANING~ of the case, and goes and confronts the supposed culprit, a GREEK TYCOON, with the fact that he is killing people in SYMBOLIC WAYS related to the MUSES as a SACRIFICE to the GODS and the suspect is like "lol . . . no . . .?"
(I forget whether the symbolic Muses revelation actually turned out to have anything to do with the solution of the case, but either way it made no sense.)
Anyway I think if it comes down to it I would probably rather have been rereading THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA: WITH OCEAN SCIENCE, but I do now find myself really curious about Orphee aux enfers, the scandalous opera that everyone is attempting to put on when not being attacked by scenery.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-20 03:33 am (UTC)So, it turns out that I have read this book, though I would have sworn right up until you mentioned Orphee aux enfers that I hadn't, and in fact I don't remember anything about the plot or the opera at all. But the opera title sounded vaguely familiar, and when I poked around to see what reference to it I was remembering I turned up...this book. My brain is a strange place, apparently.
But I definitely did read at least the first two Bryant and May books, years ago. Since what I chiefly remember is being deeply creeped out by the second, I'm going to guess I stopped there.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-20 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 03:43 pm (UTC)