Entry tags:
(no subject)
I read K.J. Charles' Death in the Spires more or less in the course of a day, which happened to be the same day that I was reading comments on/responding to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blotthis' post about aesthetic satisfaction in Genre: Mystery and Genre: Horror.
Death in the Spires is a really useful case study for genre: Mystery because Charles' usual Genre is Gay Romance. As this book was coming out she made a number of posts and announcements along the lines of: hello Readership, please be aware, this one's not Romance, it's Mystery, which does not mean there won't be romance in it, but please go into it with Mystery expectations rather than Romance expectations.
So already I was going into it expecting to pay attention to the rules of genre and how they worked or did not work in this book. And, having finished it feels really clear that the exact same fabric of characters and plot, tailored into a different shape, would form a standard Charles Romance, but because of the pattern being used the finished product is undeniably a Mystery, no question about it. And quite a fun one! I read it in a day!
The premise takes inspiration from Gaudy Night and The Secret History, among others: at the turn of the 20th century, a clique of golden youths forms at Oxford that's shattered by interpersonal romantic drama culminating in a mysterious murder; ten years later, having just received a particularly vicious poison-pen letter, one of the golden-youths-that-was decides it's finally time to figure out which one of his best-friends-that-was is a killer. The youths all seem likeable and the loss of the trust and friendship among them as important to the plot as the murder itself, which is one of the things that makes the book work, IMO.
Because of blot's post, I've been thinking a fair bit about what I want mystery-as-genre to do. P.D. James said very famously that the mystery novel is the restoration of order from disorder: a murder happens, but by the end we understand why and how, and something is done about it to bring justice. Or not done about it; occasionally the detective decides that the just response is to not do anything about it. I do like it when that happens, even if I disagree with the detective on what the just response is. I like it when justice is legitimately a problem, in mystery novels; I like it when the solution is not just the solution to a puzzle (though of course it is pleasant when a puzzle is good) but an attempt at answering the question of 'how do you repair the world, when something terrible has happened that broke it? Because every death is something that breaks it.' I say an attempt because of course this is not really a question that can be answered satisfactorily, but it is nonetheless important to keep trying. So, really, I suppose, I think a mystery novel has succeeded when it has, a little bit, failed: the puzzle is solvable, and solved, but the problem is unsolvable, and the tension between those two things is one of the things that most interests me in a mystery book.
'I want to be a little uncomfortable at the end because of how we as human beings have to keep trying to answer a question that has no good answer by answering questions that do have answers' is probably not a fair thing to ask of mystery novels, which are also, famously, comfort reading. Nonetheless it is what I think the great books in this genre achieve and I think I am right to ask it. I am not saying that Death in the Spires is a great book of the genre, but it is asking the kinds of questions that I want a mystery to ask, and it satisfied me in that, in a way that many modern mystery novels don't.
It's not that in a romance novel the love interest would not have been the murderer; it's not even that in a romance novel the fact that the love interest was the murderer wouldn't have mattered, but it would have mattered in a different way. It is so easy to imagine the romance novel this book might have been in my head and it is very fun to see it not being that: like I said, a great case study in genre.
That said, regardless of who the murderer is or isn't, I don't think there's a world in which K.J. Charles would ever have had anyone except the one remaining wealthy straight white man standing be the actual villain. This is the problem with being K.J. Charles: your readers have expectations, so neither your Two Pioneering Oxford Women or your One Pioneering Oxford Black Man can turn out to be villains, and the book has got to have gay sex in it and the gay sex got to be at least somewhat romantic. It's not that I would have wanted any of those things to be different, I just feel that it will likely get a bit constraining as far as the actual puzzle part of the mystery if she goes on with this ...
But perhaps having written this first Mystery Shaped Book, which is so clearly cut from the same cloth as the romances, she'll have a bit more room to jump from there to something made from a different cloth as long as it's in the mystery shape. Like those games where you can match cards on either suit or number.
blotthis' post about aesthetic satisfaction in Genre: Mystery and Genre: Horror. Death in the Spires is a really useful case study for genre: Mystery because Charles' usual Genre is Gay Romance. As this book was coming out she made a number of posts and announcements along the lines of: hello Readership, please be aware, this one's not Romance, it's Mystery, which does not mean there won't be romance in it, but please go into it with Mystery expectations rather than Romance expectations.
So already I was going into it expecting to pay attention to the rules of genre and how they worked or did not work in this book. And, having finished it feels really clear that the exact same fabric of characters and plot, tailored into a different shape, would form a standard Charles Romance, but because of the pattern being used the finished product is undeniably a Mystery, no question about it. And quite a fun one! I read it in a day!
The premise takes inspiration from Gaudy Night and The Secret History, among others: at the turn of the 20th century, a clique of golden youths forms at Oxford that's shattered by interpersonal romantic drama culminating in a mysterious murder; ten years later, having just received a particularly vicious poison-pen letter, one of the golden-youths-that-was decides it's finally time to figure out which one of his best-friends-that-was is a killer. The youths all seem likeable and the loss of the trust and friendship among them as important to the plot as the murder itself, which is one of the things that makes the book work, IMO.
Because of blot's post, I've been thinking a fair bit about what I want mystery-as-genre to do. P.D. James said very famously that the mystery novel is the restoration of order from disorder: a murder happens, but by the end we understand why and how, and something is done about it to bring justice. Or not done about it; occasionally the detective decides that the just response is to not do anything about it. I do like it when that happens, even if I disagree with the detective on what the just response is. I like it when justice is legitimately a problem, in mystery novels; I like it when the solution is not just the solution to a puzzle (though of course it is pleasant when a puzzle is good) but an attempt at answering the question of 'how do you repair the world, when something terrible has happened that broke it? Because every death is something that breaks it.' I say an attempt because of course this is not really a question that can be answered satisfactorily, but it is nonetheless important to keep trying. So, really, I suppose, I think a mystery novel has succeeded when it has, a little bit, failed: the puzzle is solvable, and solved, but the problem is unsolvable, and the tension between those two things is one of the things that most interests me in a mystery book.
'I want to be a little uncomfortable at the end because of how we as human beings have to keep trying to answer a question that has no good answer by answering questions that do have answers' is probably not a fair thing to ask of mystery novels, which are also, famously, comfort reading. Nonetheless it is what I think the great books in this genre achieve and I think I am right to ask it. I am not saying that Death in the Spires is a great book of the genre, but it is asking the kinds of questions that I want a mystery to ask, and it satisfied me in that, in a way that many modern mystery novels don't.
It's not that in a romance novel the love interest would not have been the murderer; it's not even that in a romance novel the fact that the love interest was the murderer wouldn't have mattered, but it would have mattered in a different way. It is so easy to imagine the romance novel this book might have been in my head and it is very fun to see it not being that: like I said, a great case study in genre.
That said, regardless of who the murderer is or isn't, I don't think there's a world in which K.J. Charles would ever have had anyone except the one remaining wealthy straight white man standing be the actual villain. This is the problem with being K.J. Charles: your readers have expectations, so neither your Two Pioneering Oxford Women or your One Pioneering Oxford Black Man can turn out to be villains, and the book has got to have gay sex in it and the gay sex got to be at least somewhat romantic. It's not that I would have wanted any of those things to be different, I just feel that it will likely get a bit constraining as far as the actual puzzle part of the mystery if she goes on with this ...
But perhaps having written this first Mystery Shaped Book, which is so clearly cut from the same cloth as the romances, she'll have a bit more room to jump from there to something made from a different cloth as long as it's in the mystery shape. Like those games where you can match cards on either suit or number.
no subject
(I also liked the balance of murder to mystery -- the past crime, the present crime, the ways in which those seemed the same until they weren't. I love the structure of -- well, here's a crime that happened ten years ago, and only these five people could have done it, here's who they were then and here's who they are now. Not so much a locked room as a locked past, perhaps? Great structure and very effectively used. but yes I also think the slightly underwritten quality is perhaps why it was so easy to zip through so quickly lol)
no subject
You should keep that line; it's well turned and useful.
(I loved the Cymbeline echo—live, and deal with others better—because what else is there to do?)
That said, Nicky is also my favorite character, so I appreciated the romance progressing without him needing to have been in the right.
Not so much a locked room as a locked past, perhaps?
I like that way of putting it also. It is a structure I really enjoy.
but yes I also think the slightly underwritten quality is perhaps why it was so easy to zip through so quickly lol
I'd have taken more blocking! And finding out what the protagonist looked like before the bottom of the second act!