the book perfectly captures a particular time and place, Northern California, 1959;
"For someone who is a seasoned reader in the crime genre, the perpetrator stood out from the beginning."
As someone who is not a seasoned reader, I did not see the solution in advance but then I never do on the few occasions when I read detective novels. I am rereading the book both in order to appreciate the time and place and in order to find out whether I can be wiser this time.
Meanwhile, in other reading, SM Stirling and David Drake give us a multi-sensory description, something that we appreciate in Anderson and also find in Stirling:
cool morning;
dark sky;
thin rain;
coal smoke;
several pungent smells.
-The Hammer, CHAPTER THREE, p. 346.
I am still rereading Dornford Yates and re-watching Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I used to read a LOT of mysteries at one time and I still have fond memories of the works of Dorothy L. Sayers, John Dickson Carr, and Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee stories. But I never claimed I could see almost right away who was the murderer in a mystery. I do recall in Sayers' STRONG POISON, I think, the Dowager Duchess of Denver saying of the books of the mystery writer who was on trial for murder that she could usually tell quite soon who was the killer in other mysteries the dowager had read. But not with those of the writer on trial.
One of the many lacunae in my readings of the works of Poul Anderson are the stories he wrote for ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Which I listed in my "Uncollected Works of Poul Anderson" article. I would like to read them someday. Soon!
And I remember that scene in the harbor of East Residence! I hope you noticed that meeting of the Council of War in which it was decided the Civil Government would try to regain the Southern Territories. What struck me was how Governor Barholm faced unusually strong opposition to that idea. In an autocracy such as the Civil Government, only great fear of the bad consequences of yet another defeat to the CG in such an attempt would make so many oppose trying to reconquer the Southern Territories from the Squadron.
Sean
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