What I have been reading Thursday

[nineveh_uk]

The newspapers. A lot.

On television, I have been catching up with Doctor Who,though have the most recent episode to go. Apparently many people didn’t like the Robin Hood episode, but I found it rather fun. Especially the comment on the deeply implausible climate of Sherwood Forest in a lot of films.

The Sayers Swindle, Victoria Abbott.

How could I resist that title? Even though as a ‘Book Collector Mystery’ and with recipes at the back there could be no doubt that this fell into that dreaded genre, ‘cosy’ crime. On the plus side, although there are cats in the book*, they do not talk, show undue sentience, or endeavour to solve crime. As for the book, well it isn’t a particularly good book, and it lacks the compulsive page-turning quality that can raise a not particularly good book to something much better. It is an all right book and might go quite well with a bad cold and a rainy day, or generally with people who like this sort of book, but it isn’t my kind of thing. Annoyingly, the one thing that I could have really enjoyed about it – a sense of place, given that it is set in the sort of Upper New York state prosperous small towns that are as much a fantasy to me as 1930s British country houses to a modern reader in New York – wasn’t really there. There is lots of mention of the glowing colours of the fall foliage, but no feeling of locality. As for the plot. Some Sayers first editions were previously pinched. Our plucky heroine must retrieve them. She has a humorous scallywag Irish family, and lives in a cute little flat in the enormous house of her employee, an elderly book-obsessed recluse who has a genius Italian housekeeper/cook and requires our heroine to dress for dinner. There are two potential love interests, both without distinguishing features bar their job titles, and one of whom compares the heroine to Harriet Vane and talks about how he could have fallen for her, while the heroine implausibly (but no more implausibly than anything else) assumes that he fancies their mutual friend who is working overseas.

The heroine does collect the hideous New English Library Sayers paperbacks, though, which leads me to believe that the authors really have read and enjoyed more than the minimal DLS required to write the book.

Miss Pym Disposes
This is not cosy, not in the least. Oh it’s easy to say superficially that it is – amateur detective, set in a women’s training college in the inter-war or just post-war period, lots of golden girls doing gymnastics in golden sunlight or walking and having picnics in fields of golden buttercups and everyone of the right class. Except that it isn’t about those things at all. Anyway, I loved it. Nice, friendly, wanting to be comfortable Lucy Pym who wants others to take hard decisions, but won’t herself. Edward Adrian, the balding Romeo. The staff. The students. The setting**. Desterro. And the ending. The ending – all of it - is exactly my kind of ending. I complained about the end of Brat Farrar, but am now wondering if I were looking on Tey there with a too cynical eye, and actually that she is perfectly aware of what I’m objecting to and pointing out what quite likely really would happen.

I had identified four potential people whomightuvdunnit: Desterro, Miss Hodge, Innes, and Nash. I hoped it wouldn’t be Desterro (it would have been in Heyer, of course). Miss Hodge I saw as looking for a way out of her predicament, and quite liked that. Nash I wasn’t that bothered about, it didn’t seem interesting. Innes would be. So the two for the price of one angsty ending was brilliant. I hold out some hope for Mary (unlike Miss Pym) given that she has so far escaped Nash’s influence as to reject the job and not go on holiday to Norway together. Hopefully once she gets home she can have a nervous breakdown and her father, who evidently is not so fond of Nash as everyone else, can get the truth out of her.

But I love Miss Pym – as a character, that is. She’s a brilliant example of failure to think of things in the round. Oh how awful it would be to send that pretty, distinguished girl to the gallows, life shouldn’t be disrupted like that, unless it is the life of someone I don't like***. But the end of her moral dilemma is that she prescribes less punishment for GBH than for suspected cheating, punishment for murder equal to it, and ultimately, no punishment for murder at all but ruined lives for the innocent bystanders for whose sake she claims to act.

I may now be writing fic.

*I have no objection to cats in books, but they do sometimes act as an indicator species.
**This may have been particularly convincing to me after my August visit to Wentworth Woodhouse, which was a PT training college at exactly this time, and which has a lot of old students come on its tours. There was one on mine. She had loved it, as apparently almost everyone did.
***It strikes me that there are a number of references in the novel to Miss Pym's experiences teaching French to the Fourth form, but that actually her actions and moral perspective are themselves rather reminiscent of the morally-undeveloped 'middle' forms of school stories.

ETA: So I've got rid of the incorrect footer, but how do I add the correct one? I have the box to display the cross-link ticked, but it doesn't.

Comments

[mountainkiss.livejournal.com]

One of the best stories ever in the history of stories (http://www.sff.net/people/DoyleMacdonald/l_tober.htm) is about a sentient cat. It's not what you think.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Saki is the exception to all sentient animals. On reflection, I think my problem isn't talking animals but cute talking animals - Saki, of course, is never cute.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

No, "cute" is not a word applied to Saki.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I have been looking out for a copy of Miss Pym since I read Lois Sanger disposes some years ago - sufficiently long ago to remember very little about it including the murderer. I was expecting something far more straightforward but thoroughly enjoyed the book (despite my complaints that I was half way through and no one had died). I suspected Henrietta attempting to correct her mistake, or even a bizarre form of suicide. The ending was rather chilling. It was a huge contrast to the other murder-in-a-boarding-school book I love: Cat Among the Pigeons. I am in the middle of reading another Josephine Tey (The Man in the Queue) and have just discovered her entire catalogue seems to be available on the Australian gutenberg site. I could be gone some time...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

The end is chilling indeed. If one of the justifications in detective fiction for sending someone to the gallows is to stop them murdering again, Lucy Pym utterly fails here, because the murderer is absolutely someone one can see murdering another person should someone find themselves in the way of her view of the world.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Yes definitely. After all, it worked last time and the world always goes the way she wants it. I was going to say she's going to turn into Mary Whitaker but MW only kept at it because she was threatened with the first one being found out. How much longer has Miss Pym got? I agree with Sonetka that Innes won't crack and will go on atoning for ever. Everyone is so bloody single-track and all the tracks collide in a spectacular train crash and it is DOOOOM all round. Except for the murderer.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Is Miss Pym safest if she goes for Christmas or not? Though I think that she probably is safe, because she will hurriedly forget for the sake of being comfortable, and Nash doesn't strike me as the type to get paranoid (though I could be wrong... its so opaque as to how knowing she is in that last scene). Poor Innes. I bet Nash would throw her under the bus, too, if need be. "Silly ungrateful cow, if she can't appreciate what I did for her, I'm not going to put myself out any more."

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Poor Innes. No-one is dealing with the consequences of their actions apart from Innes, who didn't in fact do anything. Agree that that would be exactly Nash's reaction but I'm not sure whether she'd just write Innes off as having proved herself an ingrate, unworthy of her attention any longer or actually cares enough to be angry about it. "Silly" and "unworthy" are of course 13 year-old and 21 year-old Simon's view of Patrick Ashby, which does not bode well.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I think your "Miss Pym" link may have gone awry

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love Miss Pym -- it's one of those books I first read when I was about twelve because my grandfather owned all of Sayers and Tey and Christie and there wasn't always much to do at his house. I've reread it periodically ever since and am always surprised at the things I missed on the last read. I'm not sure about Innes having a breakdown and telling all -- I hope she tells someone but she seems like someone who would just collapse completely if she cracked even a bit. And of course, Nash wouldn't be bothered in any case, I think (I'm reminded of the opening situation in the Deptford Trilogy -- how Ramsay tries to tell Staunton what he's ended up doing and Staunton is just impervious to it -- "What's that got to do with me? I can't be bothered about it.") I wonder, though -- even if Lucy had kept the ornament and gone to the police, would they have thought it was enough to build a case against the charming and wealthy Nash? Lucy might have done the right thing and the result might have been the same in the end regardless. But damn, I wish Miss Lux had found that ornament instead.

I love Desterro and Edward Adrian in equal measure. When I'm reading an article or hearing about some particularly silly fad, I always think "Today's idea may be nonsense tomorrow, but a clavicle is a clavicle for all time," and start planning again on how I'll get into hospital work when my kids are older :).

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I love Desterro. I am sure she would only murder the right people.

Re. would the police have had a case, we don't know what other evidence there might have been. By the time of the death it is far too late for fingerprinting, but if Lucy had come up with the rosette right away and they sealed the room, there might have been some, or footprints. Nash might have been seen by someone that morning in those shoes. How would she have reacted if confronted by the police? The additional problem with Lucy's action is that she doesn't simply say nothing about something she alone witnessed - she actually removes evidence that someone else might have acted on, for instance when Rouse was found. Froken is no idiot; had she found the rosette she woudl have known someone had been there.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

The trouble with fingerprinting is that all of those girls were in the gym constantly, and while it was vacuumed every day it doesn't sound like they wiped the equipment down as well. Nash's fingerprints on the boom would mean nothing. As for the rosette -- since Innes wore those shoes as well (that threw me -- I've never shared shoes with friends but hey, they're close and if they wear the same size, why not?) unless someone actually had seen Nash, which is a long shot, there'd be no way to prove that it was definitely Nash and not Innes. Nash herself could say it was Innes (leading perhaps to a second murder, this one judicial) and there would be plenty of witnesses to the fact that Innes wore Nash's shoes routinely. But what Lucy does is unconscionable -- she didn't learn at all from the episode with throwing away Rouse's crib book, it just turned out to be a preview of the far worse concealment she would commit later on.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Nash's fingerprints on the pin - on top of others - might mean something. Though alone it's not exactly conclusive. Does Innes wear Nash's regularly? Everyone is in slippers that particular night for a reason, maybe Innes has just borrowed them as a one off "Oh, even my slippers are too tight!" "Here, try these!"

I get the impression that Lucy learns from very little - possibly because that would involve more self-examination than she likes.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I'll bet her book on psychology was a revealing piece of work, albeit unintentionally. You're right, we don't know if Innes routinely wore Nash's slippers, but she did do it at least once, and in the view of a number of witnesses. That does make it much harder for police to establish who was wearing the shoes when the boom was tampered with, as they were Innes's size and there's always the possibility that she wore them for an extra measure of security, the way someone might filch another person's coat so that if they're seen from a distance it will throw the scent off.

I don't see Nash bothering much with Miss Pym -- it's been a while since my last read, but she never realizes where Miss Pym found the rosette, does she? Nash seems to assume that the rosette was somewhere nearby and Miss Pym just picked it up, which actually sets her mind at ease since she'd worried about losing it in the gym. I'm not sure Nash has met her next victim yet, actually, but I'm sure there will be a next one. Romantic rival, perhaps? Someone at her old school where she's going to work?

[helenajust.livejournal.com]

I love Josephine Tey, but this is one I do not re-read because it makes me both sad and cross. It seems to me to be unlike her other books, so I'd be interested in your view once you've read all the others (sadly, there are not nearly enough of them). There is an added interest in that Miss Tey herself attended a Physical Training College and taught in schools for a while.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I didn't know Tey attended a PT College! That adds an interesting perspective to the story.

Of the others, I've read Daughter of Time (which I wasn't keen on) and Brat Farrar, which was interested but I didn't like anyone in it, so if it is unlike her other books it may be the one I like!

[mobile-alh.livejournal.com]

Although I routinely reread Josephine Tey, I also refuse to reread Miss Pym because of the depressing effect it has on me.
I can definitely recommend The Franchise Affair, which is perhaps more similr to Miss Pym than the other novels...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm obviously going to have to give The Franchise Affair a go, everyone is telling me to read it!

[azdak.livejournal.com]

After that rave review - I skipped the spoilers - I'm going to try Miss Pym Disposes, although I bounced heavily off Brat Farrar.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

You definitely want to approach it unspoiled. It seems at first a bit odd in structure (given that it is marketed as a detective novel), but in fact the pacing is excellent. I liked it a lot more than Brat Farrar, which I found very interesting, but disliked all of the characters.

[christine reuther (from livejournal.com)]

Try the Franchise Affair. Probably my favorite Tey, because it is exceedingly plausible (and based on a real incident). And a recommendation re books with North American atmosphere, although more contemporary: check out Louise Penny. I've never been to Canada but can't wait to go to Quebec. The people and the place are as real as any of Sayer's settings. I started with The Rule Against Murder but it isn't the first in the series, just one of the earlier ones.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I am slightly nervous of TFA because everyone in it sounds so appalling! But it keeps getting recced, so I must try it. Thanks for the Penny rec, I'll look into those.