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hannahstohelit's reviews
80 reviews
The Anatomy of Murder by The Detection Club
4.25
Unlike a lot of the other reviewers, I really really enjoyed this one! I agree with others that Helen Simpson's coverage of her case was a bit dull, and I kind of feel like the only real justification for Rhode's piece at all was him gloating that he got a tell all letter from Constance Kent herself, but like... if I had, I'd have done the same, because obviously. (I had already read enough about the case to know that the letter was genuine and almost definitely from Constance, as Rhode deduced.)
One interesting thing for me was the way in which different writers with their own stories or their own way of thinking about things a) chose which stories to write about and b) approached how they did so. Margaret Cole and Anthony Berkeley wrote about stories which were quite similar (woman in love triangle is arrested for the murder of her husband but acquitted), which I don't know was exactly the best choice for a collection like this but it did allow the unique features of each case to come out as well as the unique voices and opinions of each writer to shine through. For Cole, who had her own pretty unconventional and apparently sexually unusual marriage to a somewhat odd man, her approach of sympathy to a trio in a similarly unorthodox relationship is very sympathetic- a bit academically snobbish but otherwise very human and realistic. For Berkeley, a man who had his own affairs with married women, he attacks a case where he can't help but sympathize with both the straying wife and the (to the modern eye, shockingly age-gapped) affair partner in terms of humanizing their connection, even if not the actual murder of the husband, while also unleashing his apparently inexorable misogyny. I was curious if Jumping Jenny was written after this because his description of Alma Rattenbury's character felt a bit like a more sympathetic version of his murder victim in that book, but it turns out Jumping Jenny was written two years before the Rattenbury murder ever took place, so apparently that's just the natural twist of his mind.
Punshon's description of the Landru case was great, and as it was a case I was totally unfamiliar with I do wish it had described the scope and details of the crimes a bit better, but I guess in the 30s it would have been still fresh in people's minds. Sayers's write up of the Julia Wallace case was characteristically excellent, I appreciated it being told "from the POV of a mystery writer/expert" as was at that point something of her wont, and I agree with her (as I'd read previously) that the story as told fits better with a third party murderer than Wallace himself. (That said, Sayers makes one logical error when she supposes that there's no reason for Wallace to wear a raincoat over his naked body while killing his own wife- if the raincoat would be left with the body anyway, then it would minimize the mess that Wallace would need to clean up from himself before quickly dressing and heading out on a quick timeline.) I'd have found Crofts's description of the farm murder in New Zealand a bit dry had the actual crime not been completely fascinating in its own right, completely redeeming it.
All in all, super enjoyable!
One interesting thing for me was the way in which different writers with their own stories or their own way of thinking about things a) chose which stories to write about and b) approached how they did so. Margaret Cole and Anthony Berkeley wrote about stories which were quite similar (woman in love triangle is arrested for the murder of her husband but acquitted), which I don't know was exactly the best choice for a collection like this but it did allow the unique features of each case to come out as well as the unique voices and opinions of each writer to shine through. For Cole, who had her own pretty unconventional and apparently sexually unusual marriage to a somewhat odd man, her approach of sympathy to a trio in a similarly unorthodox relationship is very sympathetic- a bit academically snobbish but otherwise very human and realistic. For Berkeley, a man who had his own affairs with married women, he attacks a case where he can't help but sympathize with both the straying wife and the (to the modern eye, shockingly age-gapped) affair partner in terms of humanizing their connection, even if not the actual murder of the husband, while also unleashing his apparently inexorable misogyny. I was curious if Jumping Jenny was written after this because his description of Alma Rattenbury's character felt a bit like a more sympathetic version of his murder victim in that book, but it turns out Jumping Jenny was written two years before the Rattenbury murder ever took place, so apparently that's just the natural twist of his mind.
Punshon's description of the Landru case was great, and as it was a case I was totally unfamiliar with I do wish it had described the scope and details of the crimes a bit better, but I guess in the 30s it would have been still fresh in people's minds. Sayers's write up of the Julia Wallace case was characteristically excellent, I appreciated it being told "from the POV of a mystery writer/expert" as was at that point something of her wont, and I agree with her (as I'd read previously) that the story as told fits better with a third party murderer than Wallace himself. (That said, Sayers makes one logical error when she supposes that there's no reason for Wallace to wear a raincoat over his naked body while killing his own wife- if the raincoat would be left with the body anyway, then it would minimize the mess that Wallace would need to clean up from himself before quickly dressing and heading out on a quick timeline.) I'd have found Crofts's description of the farm murder in New Zealand a bit dry had the actual crime not been completely fascinating in its own right, completely redeeming it.
All in all, super enjoyable!
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff
3.5
I wanted to like this much better than I did, but with the book's structure I just spent so much time confused. There were so many people with similar names and very little attempt to structure the book to follow particular people's stories over time to help keep them straight. I assume that Schiff's idea was to do everything in purely chronological order based on the availability of source material, but all that I got from that was a meandering and baffling narrative where people kept popping in and out, details kept seeming repetitive, it wasn't clear why one person got more attention than another....
In general, because of this lack of clear organization, I didn't end up feeling like I had a real understanding of the event or the conclusions historians have now come to about it. There were some randomly scattered contextual chapters but they weren't well integrated into the narrative and very few of the events felt like they were ever really thematically analyzed in such a way as to enlighten the reader rather than just infodump. I'll also add that the prose and language use in the text alternate between Schiff clearly using the language/assumptions of people in the era, a more skeptical take, and Schiff's own sarcasm, and while context clues allow us to tell which is which it's still a jarring approach.
In all, I learned interesting information but didn't get too much real understanding of the period in history at the end- just lots of different names and places and events and allegations that are now all jumbled in my head.
In general, because of this lack of clear organization, I didn't end up feeling like I had a real understanding of the event or the conclusions historians have now come to about it. There were some randomly scattered contextual chapters but they weren't well integrated into the narrative and very few of the events felt like they were ever really thematically analyzed in such a way as to enlighten the reader rather than just infodump. I'll also add that the prose and language use in the text alternate between Schiff clearly using the language/assumptions of people in the era, a more skeptical take, and Schiff's own sarcasm, and while context clues allow us to tell which is which it's still a jarring approach.
In all, I learned interesting information but didn't get too much real understanding of the period in history at the end- just lots of different names and places and events and allegations that are now all jumbled in my head.
Eleven Blue Men And Other Narratives Of Medical Detection by Berton Roueché
Not really a reviewable book per se but I love Roueche and I loved reading this. I'd previously read The Medical Detectives so I knew that this collection (and the other one I have out that I'll read next week) would have some duplicates, and I knew that not all the essays here would be medical mysteries, but it was still an excellent time that I loved reading. I really enjoyed some of the non-medical mystery articles as well- I now need to ask my grandfather if he remembers getting vaccinated for smallpox in 1947, and reading an article about the development of antibiotics from a time when they were brand new with only five on the market was absolutely fascinating. It's great how set these are in their time and place- some are medical mysteries that would be mysteries now too but that take their time very much for granted, and some are genuinely witnessing the discovery of something that is old hat now 60-90 years later (the psittacosis essay, for example). Just always fascinating.
How Magicians Think: Misdirection, Deception, and Why Magic Matters by Joshua Jay
4.5
I was stuck between 4.25 and 4.5 on this one, but I went higher because I think it does what it aims to do quite well and the fact that what it aims to do and what I wanted it to do aren't really the same thing isn't its fault. I did know quite a bit of what was in this book already, as a former magic-phase kid who now loves reading about the development of stage magic, but I still got a lot out of this book even if only being introduced to a bunch of different current magicians who I wasn't super familiar with.
Having already done some magic reading, I was surprised that in the "can magicians cheat at cards" section there wasn't anything about SW Erdnase and the use of cardsharping techniques in the development of closeup card magic- with that space instead being taken up by some random anecdotes- and in general I would have loved to see a bit more magic history in there, but what was there was a lot of fun, and while I knew quite a bit of it already I certainly had plenty to learn. I also thought that Jay did a great job of conveying something that I learned back in my magic-kid phase (and that made me drop it...), which is that many magic "tricks" aren't gimmicks but are actually insanely hard skills that require a lifetime to practice (as well as excellent flexibility, hand eye coordination, all that good stuff). There's a reason why so many professional magicians are nuts about what they do, because you have to be that nuts about magic to devote enough of your life to become good enough to be professional! I now want to dive back into a more long-form kind of history of magic book and have one or two on hold from the library now.
Having already done some magic reading, I was surprised that in the "can magicians cheat at cards" section there wasn't anything about SW Erdnase and the use of cardsharping techniques in the development of closeup card magic- with that space instead being taken up by some random anecdotes- and in general I would have loved to see a bit more magic history in there, but what was there was a lot of fun, and while I knew quite a bit of it already I certainly had plenty to learn. I also thought that Jay did a great job of conveying something that I learned back in my magic-kid phase (and that made me drop it...), which is that many magic "tricks" aren't gimmicks but are actually insanely hard skills that require a lifetime to practice (as well as excellent flexibility, hand eye coordination, all that good stuff). There's a reason why so many professional magicians are nuts about what they do, because you have to be that nuts about magic to devote enough of your life to become good enough to be professional! I now want to dive back into a more long-form kind of history of magic book and have one or two on hold from the library now.
The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues by Ellen Raskin
4.25
REREAD
I borrowed this book from the library a few months ago, loved it, so have now bought it- hopefully only the second of many future reads.
I actually like this (and Leon/Noel) better than The Westing Game, generally Raskin's best regarded book. In terms of its actual craftsmanship TWG might be better (the main flaws here are in pacing and style) but this book has an element of creativity and what I can only call fun that I've never really gotten from TWG. (Though, actually, if you read this after having read TWG, you'll see that a LOT of TWG characters/plot beats are recycled with changes from here- Dickory/Garson to Turtle/Sandy, both books having an idiot messenger boy and a sausage factory secretary, the scene of the plucky girl detective going up to the rich man's house to confront him with the truth... there were definitely others that I don't remember offhand.)
Part of the thing is that, to me, Raskin's best books have children who are more "normal" than the adults. When you have realistic adults, you are forced to confine your plot to reality or risk losing tonal credibility. So TWG ends up with a bunch of people with normal names living in a normal apartment building doing normal things until one weird thing happens to them... and then stuff is weird but it's not explained why weird things are happening to them so they just seem unnecessary. And then the solution is so outlandishly unrealistic that we end up just shrugging our shoulders. Here, from the start we have a normal protagonist with a crazy name, a very off kilter and unique setting, a truly nutty protagonist who never quite rings true but that's fine because why would he, and a whole catalog of oddball side characters. So anything can happen, and when it does happen it's delightful rather than slightly puzzling and tonally strange.
Is the pacing off? Definitely yes. The overall concept is very clever, but the scene ofDickory's attack came out of nowhere and ended basically immediately, and it's written in a somewhat confused way. Overall, everything happens far too quickly. In general, I feel like the whole book would have been better with another chapter at the beginning, the same middle (maybe with one more mystery in it, but not necessarily), and another two chapters developing the ending. Not that any actual additional things would HAPPEN, just that they would be related at less of a breakneck pace. It would also give the mystery portion more time to breathe- she did a great job of revealing clues along the way so you figure things out, and then you and Dickory are surprised at the exact same time, but it still feels rushed in a way that makes it not as good as it could have been. (The "Finkel, Dinkel, Hinkle" joke also gets kind of played out and probably should have been cut.) I also think that her style can be a bit jarring, but I think that I feel that way about all of her books except for Leon/Noel, where she retains more of a children's-book style that I think is kind of perfect.
But overall, it's such a fun, clever, enjoyable book. And I still do like it better than The Westing Game.
I borrowed this book from the library a few months ago, loved it, so have now bought it- hopefully only the second of many future reads.
I actually like this (and Leon/Noel) better than The Westing Game, generally Raskin's best regarded book. In terms of its actual craftsmanship TWG might be better (the main flaws here are in pacing and style) but this book has an element of creativity and what I can only call fun that I've never really gotten from TWG. (Though, actually, if you read this after having read TWG, you'll see that a LOT of TWG characters/plot beats are recycled with changes from here- Dickory/Garson to Turtle/Sandy, both books having an idiot messenger boy and a sausage factory secretary, the scene of the plucky girl detective going up to the rich man's house to confront him with the truth... there were definitely others that I don't remember offhand.)
Part of the thing is that, to me, Raskin's best books have children who are more "normal" than the adults. When you have realistic adults, you are forced to confine your plot to reality or risk losing tonal credibility. So TWG ends up with a bunch of people with normal names living in a normal apartment building doing normal things until one weird thing happens to them... and then stuff is weird but it's not explained why weird things are happening to them so they just seem unnecessary. And then the solution is so outlandishly unrealistic that we end up just shrugging our shoulders. Here, from the start we have a normal protagonist with a crazy name, a very off kilter and unique setting, a truly nutty protagonist who never quite rings true but that's fine because why would he, and a whole catalog of oddball side characters. So anything can happen, and when it does happen it's delightful rather than slightly puzzling and tonally strange.
Is the pacing off? Definitely yes. The overall concept is very clever, but the scene of
But overall, it's such a fun, clever, enjoyable book. And I still do like it better than The Westing Game.
This Is MR Fortune by H.C. Bailey
4.5
Great Reggie Fortune collection- not the best, but pretty high up there. I will never know exactly what it is that I love about these stories so much, but one thing is that while the stories don't shy away from human evil they also don't shy away from, if it makes sense, HOW evil it is. Mr Fortune is one of the detectives who, despite his blustery and occasionally kvetchy mannerisms, shows a lot of empathy and takes the pain of vulnerable people seriously. Some other writers do this but do it through character development for the detective, which is well and good but Bailey doesn't need that to do it. I don't know, I think it makes sense... or maybe it's that he really has a sense of priorities. This book has at two stories where there's ultimately not really an actionable crime, but we can tell from their various treatments that while one is treated as ultimately silly, the other is truly horrifying.
Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers
4.0
REREAD
One of these days I'll reread Sayers's other books to show what I think of her at her best- this is definitely not that, which is one of the reasons why I took it out of the library rather than from my own bookshelves. Still, the only two Sayers books that I'd go below 4 stars on are Whose Body? and Five Red Herrings. This one has some serious flaws (starts too slow, ends too fast; I can see why some of the more racist elements may have been, in her mind, well-meaning but it sure doesn't make it more pleasant to read them) but I do enjoy the "howdunnit" nature of it- nice change from the typical "whodunnit" style. Is the plot a bit overly complicated? Maybe. Is Mary Whittaker something of a cipher? Definitely (though maybe that's somewhat the point). Still an interesting and often affecting read as Wimsey is forced to grapple with whether his choice to investigate led to additional deaths, something which would affect him in the following book (Bellona Club) as he debates whether to take that case.
I don't mention homophobia here because I have a kind of an essay about it in my head- I think there is some, but less of it than people often blame this book for. But like, I do think you need to read Clemence Dane's Regiment of Women (mentioned in Unnatural Death itself) in order to get what Sayers was going for.
One of these days I'll reread Sayers's other books to show what I think of her at her best- this is definitely not that, which is one of the reasons why I took it out of the library rather than from my own bookshelves. Still, the only two Sayers books that I'd go below 4 stars on are Whose Body? and Five Red Herrings. This one has some serious flaws (starts too slow, ends too fast; I can see why some of the more racist elements may have been, in her mind, well-meaning but it sure doesn't make it more pleasant to read them) but I do enjoy the "howdunnit" nature of it- nice change from the typical "whodunnit" style. Is the plot a bit overly complicated? Maybe. Is Mary Whittaker something of a cipher? Definitely (though maybe that's somewhat the point). Still an interesting and often affecting read as Wimsey is forced to grapple with whether his choice to investigate led to additional deaths, something which would affect him in the following book (Bellona Club) as he debates whether to take that case.
I don't mention homophobia here because I have a kind of an essay about it in my head- I think there is some, but less of it than people often blame this book for. But like, I do think you need to read Clemence Dane's Regiment of Women (mentioned in Unnatural Death itself) in order to get what Sayers was going for.
Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV by Emily Nussbaum
4.25
I'd thought, at first, that I'd find nothing interesting in this book because I don't really watch reality TV, then I was like "well ANYTHING can be interesting if written about well and reality TV is kind of inherently interesting" and so I reserved it from the library.
Second conjecture was correct- this was fascinating. I'd seen basically none of the shows mentioned in the book at basically any point but it didn't matter- as someone fascinated by the history of TV broadcasting I thought that the opening chapters were actually possibly my favorites (and only augmented by my parents, when I mentioned it to them, breaking into the theme song of Candid Camera). The later chapters about specific later reality shows and genres were also incredibly interesting, but more as sources of interesting anecdotes, which they definitely were. (I will note that I skipped the Apprentice chapter because I kept feeling like I already read stuff about that and had zero desire to continue. It also bugged me that it was placed at the end due to the Trump presidency factor despite chronological order seeming to place it several chapters earlier.)
If there's one criticism I had, it's that it made it hard to know what the book thought of as reality TV and what it didn't. My parents kept asking "so did they count game shows" and in the old-TV section, in a sense yes they did- Queen For A Day, The Newlywed Game, and The Dating Game were fundamentally game shows, they were just personality based rather than trivia based, but then they weren't really contextualized with the general game show trends of the era. And there was a whole chapter on Bravo shows that included Queer Eye but then completely left off, say, HGTV despite it being a full channel of that kind of show as well. It's not what people think of when they think "reality TV" while Bravo is, but I couldn't quite figure out why. The Food Network didn't get a mention as such either, but some of its shows were mentioned based on shared production figures/reality-style formats. In general, it was just quite confusing what "counted" as reality TV and what didn't. I would have also appreciated a bit of commentary about reality TV in the age of streaming, with shows like Queer Eye and The Kardashians moving fully to streaming and such. The thread from early TV to modern reality TV was compellingly laid out, but I couldn't completely tell where the lines were drawn.
But while I'm not sure if I can now say that I "understand reality TV"- especially as, again, someone who's seen so little of it- but I absolutely got a great peek into the history of the development of television and a lot of great anecdotes engagingly written, which was basically what I wanted for my afternoon.
Second conjecture was correct- this was fascinating. I'd seen basically none of the shows mentioned in the book at basically any point but it didn't matter- as someone fascinated by the history of TV broadcasting I thought that the opening chapters were actually possibly my favorites (and only augmented by my parents, when I mentioned it to them, breaking into the theme song of Candid Camera). The later chapters about specific later reality shows and genres were also incredibly interesting, but more as sources of interesting anecdotes, which they definitely were. (I will note that I skipped the Apprentice chapter because I kept feeling like I already read stuff about that and had zero desire to continue. It also bugged me that it was placed at the end due to the Trump presidency factor despite chronological order seeming to place it several chapters earlier.)
If there's one criticism I had, it's that it made it hard to know what the book thought of as reality TV and what it didn't. My parents kept asking "so did they count game shows" and in the old-TV section, in a sense yes they did- Queen For A Day, The Newlywed Game, and The Dating Game were fundamentally game shows, they were just personality based rather than trivia based, but then they weren't really contextualized with the general game show trends of the era. And there was a whole chapter on Bravo shows that included Queer Eye but then completely left off, say, HGTV despite it being a full channel of that kind of show as well. It's not what people think of when they think "reality TV" while Bravo is, but I couldn't quite figure out why. The Food Network didn't get a mention as such either, but some of its shows were mentioned based on shared production figures/reality-style formats. In general, it was just quite confusing what "counted" as reality TV and what didn't. I would have also appreciated a bit of commentary about reality TV in the age of streaming, with shows like Queer Eye and The Kardashians moving fully to streaming and such. The thread from early TV to modern reality TV was compellingly laid out, but I couldn't completely tell where the lines were drawn.
But while I'm not sure if I can now say that I "understand reality TV"- especially as, again, someone who's seen so little of it- but I absolutely got a great peek into the history of the development of television and a lot of great anecdotes engagingly written, which was basically what I wanted for my afternoon.
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
4.5
I love reading old books and thinking you know what they're going to be like and they totally aren't! Like, I'd never have thought that the Woman in White wasn't Laura Fairlie.
This was really fun, and while I think I liked The Moonstone more just because there was more variety and creativity of side characters and subplots, this was a really great and surprisingly fast read (by the end I wasn't 100% sure what about the story needed 600 pages to tell it in but I enjoyed all 600 of em). I find it fascinating that Collins- who is just a fucking fantastic writer- mentions that he believes that all good books with good plots create good characters as a result, when in fact that's not the case and he was just preternaturally good at it. Do Walter and Laura inherently have much distinguishing personality? Hard to say. Are they still really compelling in his hands? I think so, though of course Marian Holcombe is even more so. And while the villainy wasn't what I'd imagined it would be either, it felt both more human and in that way more insidious as depicted, through the characters of two quite differently evil men.
Is the ending a bit ridiculous? Yes, but so is the ending of The Moonstone, so maybe that's just Collins. But who cares, the whole thing was a complete pleasure.
This was really fun, and while I think I liked The Moonstone more just because there was more variety and creativity of side characters and subplots, this was a really great and surprisingly fast read (by the end I wasn't 100% sure what about the story needed 600 pages to tell it in but I enjoyed all 600 of em). I find it fascinating that Collins- who is just a fucking fantastic writer- mentions that he believes that all good books with good plots create good characters as a result, when in fact that's not the case and he was just preternaturally good at it. Do Walter and Laura inherently have much distinguishing personality? Hard to say. Are they still really compelling in his hands? I think so, though of course Marian Holcombe is even more so. And while the villainy wasn't what I'd imagined it would be either, it felt both more human and in that way more insidious as depicted, through the characters of two quite differently evil men.
Is the ending a bit ridiculous? Yes, but so is the ending of The Moonstone, so maybe that's just Collins. But who cares, the whole thing was a complete pleasure.
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
4.5
REREAD-
Well, I mean, always a classic. Not perfect, but doesn't need to be to be utterly fun and charming and I have no interest in dissecting it.
Well, I mean, always a classic. Not perfect, but doesn't need to be to be utterly fun and charming and I have no interest in dissecting it.