Tue 15 Oct 2013
PATRICIA HARWIN – Arson and Old Lace. Pocket, paperback original; 1st printing, Feb 2004.
Oh, why not. I’m going to quote all of the first two paragraphs. Telling her own story is Catherine Penny:
I used to wake in our apartment on West Eighty-third and listen for that silence through Manhattan’s background hum. Keeping by long habit to my side of the bed, I would see behind closed eyelids the narrow country road and the old cottages with roses in bloom on their walls, as they had been when Quin and I had first come to Far Wychwood.
I submit to you that there are few mystery novels that summarize their mood, their setting, and one of the characters as quickly as this. Catherine is in her sixties, a recent grandmother — her daughter and her husband live not too far away, near Oxford — and as you’ve gathered, newly divorced.
There are challenges for everyone in this world, but packing up and moving across the ocean by yourself, leaving your previous life behind, is not one that most people would voluntarily undertake. Across the road, Catherine has a neighbor, an ill-tempered old man who loves alone, nearly incapable of caring for himself, and considered dishonest by the surrounding townspeople. And thereby lies the tale.
When old George’s house burns down, it is Catherine who hears his dying words. And when a body is found in the churchyard next to a huge ornamental cross, who is nearby? Catherine again.
This is the first of a series, and for the most part, it starts off on the right foot, especially when it focuses on Catherine’s life: her struggles with her daughter, who has her own views of raising children; her attempts, largely successful, to make friends with her new neighbors; her bouts of nostalgia with a marriage that was so happy and then so suddenly wasn’t.
Not so successful is the mystery itself, as elements of the plot so obvious to the many-times-over detective fiction reader go flitting over the heads of the people in Catherine’s close circle of new friends, which includes the local constabulary, Detective Sergeant John Bennett. (Not a love interest. He’s happily married.)
That it slips Catherine’s mind to tell Sgt. Bennett everything she knows causes considerable problems as well. Red herrings and false trails abound, but if you stay with the obvious, you’ll be headed in the right direction. You won’t know all — the pieces don’t go together that easily — but you’ll be idling your thumbs for a bit while the story catches up.
And Catherine Penny, prone as she is to rash and impulsive behavior, is a bit of fascination in herself. It’s too bad that we’ll have to wait until Fall of 2005 for a return visit, scheduled to be told in Slaying Is Such Sweet Sorrow.
[UPDATE] 10-15-13. Unfortunately, as it turns out, there were only the two books in the series. 2005 was about the time (as I recall) that Pocket cut way back on “genre” fiction: mysteries, science fiction and westerns — one large implosion and they were all gone — and that may have been one of the reasons that Catherine Penny had only the two cases on record.
October 18th, 2013 at 12:35 am
I can only say, if I wanted to read about old people, I’d write about myself.
I’ve no doubt it was pleasant enough, and perhaps better written than some, but that one line sums up the problem I have with cozies in general: “Not so successful is the mystery itself, as elements of the plot so obvious to the many-times-over detective fiction reader go flitting over the heads of the people in Catherine’s close circle of new friends …”
I’m not sure what the point is in writing, reading, much less publishing books that don’t meet the simplest of genre standards. It’s a bit like writing a western set in Boston with no guns or horses.
October 18th, 2013 at 11:33 am
Writers tend to resist the standards of genres, that is why we have so many multi-genre books. Genre limits are to please booksellers who have to stack them on a shelf somewhere.
The standards of the mystery genre is always changing from the days when it was a puzzle to when characters became the center of attention. Today romance suspense is now grouped with the traditional mystery and the hardboiled noir.
Mystery genre is a big tent. Everyone is welcomed…as long as I don’t have to read it.
October 18th, 2013 at 11:42 am
I think this book epitomizes the state of the “cozy” mystery as it was ten years ago. The emphasis in this case was on the characters, not the mystery and (in my opinion) the trend has continued in that direction ever since.
Here’s a question I don’t know the answer to. I’ve been jammed up with personal matters that have needed attending to this week, and when I had a few moments free on Tuesday, this review, which has been in the queue for quite a while, was handy, and I posted it.
What I suspect, though, is that reviews that cover books such as this one are of little or no interest to regular readers of this blog. Are my suspicions true? (An inquiring mind wants to know)
October 18th, 2013 at 2:14 pm
#3. Would Allen J. Hubin limit his book to just the type of crime fiction he likes?
Yes, it is common to read comments from some regulars that they are not interested in this type of mystery. That is what comment section is for, but so what? I am here to read about all types of mysteries. You may have slowed down posting but you still do enough where I can wait for you to feature a type of mystery I enjoy.
Maybe my view is based on my dislike of traditional mysteries and the fifties style mystery, but I find the discussion and reviews here about them fascinating. I am here to learn about all forms of mystery fiction not just to discover what to buy,
I am wanting to read more about the mystery fiction of the last quarter of the last century, not less. The cozies are not high on my reading list, but it is not that common you post anything about one.
October 19th, 2013 at 2:21 am
You misunderstand my point — I like Alain Robbe-Grillett and Durrenmatt, Stanley Ellin and Raymond Chandler, I should talk — but this book was no literary effort, it was marketed as a cozy, and if you aren’t good enough to do a character based book and a decent plot you should not be writing genre fiction.
This author was clearly no Chabon, Ishguro, Robbins, or Pynchon using the pulp voice for larger purpose, she was supposed to be entertaining a specific audience, and her job was to achieve her own goals while fulfilling their needs. If the mystery is that bad she failed. Frankly, I don’t think there would have been a third book even without the Pocket Books implosion.
It’s no excuse that your audience is so hungry they’ll devour anything put in front of them. You still owe them your best in all aspects of the work.
I never said this should be excluded from the genre, I just said that it failed in one of the basic goals of writing genre fiction, and if you can’t do that why write genre fiction in the first place? I’ve contributed more than my share of entries in Hubin that have that dash to point out they are at best associational. I do not mind stretching the borders — if you succeed — or it’s at least a noble failure.
I love that writers like P.D.James and Rendell expanded the horizons of the genre, as Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith did before them, but they didn’t skip the plot equal to the characters part. They did both brilliantly.
This is genre fiction, and if you fail in the genre part what’s the point? She is far from the first writer to do this, and won’t be the last, but you will never make me broaden my horizons so much I have to praise someone for failing at the most fundamental reason for genre fiction — providing their audience with what they want as well as giving them more.
Frankly, if you can’t do anything as simple as a mystery plot (you write them backwards, it isn’t that hard) just how good are you going to create characters over the long hall?
I respect and care about this genre. I have praised more literary works when they deserved it, and will damn them when they fail. My reading in the genre is deep, and fairly vast as Steve knows, from its proto beginings in the gothic era through the pre Golden Age of the 19th and early 20th century. I respect and revere that the genre is growing in audience and in its increasing horizons. But writing a poor plot and hiding it behind your characters is bad writing even in great literature, and however talented you may be, if you can’t be bothered to learn the basics, you shouldn’t be doing this,
And as for “Romantic Suspense,” it no longer means Mary Stewart or Phyllis Whitney, today the majority I’ve tried to read are little more than hard core porn for women. I’ve published erotica and been compared to Lawerence and Miller — I don’t say that to brag — only to back up my right to make the claim. If you stop the plot every third chapter for a graphic sex scene it fits the definition of porn, and that’s a whole other genre, but it’s not romantic or suspense, and no, it isn’t what Spillane and Fleming did. That said, some of it is good porn — as porn goes,
And yes Steve it was D.H. and Henry not T.E. and Larry — I checked, because I thought I was doing mid level Chandler and wanted to be sure before I used the quote in letters to publishers and agents. And it was in The New York Times and Playboy to boot. Though the latter did say it was the kind of erotica (it’s erotica if you have to look up some of the words to figure out what”s happening) you could leave out on the coffee table when the minister came over — having never met a Southern Baptist clergyman I suppose.
October 19th, 2013 at 9:31 am
David, it is great to have you back.
October 19th, 2013 at 10:20 am
David,
Don’t believe the book or author warrants such detailed and intelligent critical appraisal, but I see this almost all of the time re film criticism, informed scholars re-evaluating projects made cynically and on-the-fly. Ah!
October 20th, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Barry
Good point, but, as in science, you can learn more sometimes from failures than a single success.
As Steve points out this trend has continued — particularly in the ever present cozy — so it’s worth looking at. In some ways criticism is more important in regard to failures. All you can really learn from a success is it is hard to recreate.