Reading: The Case of the Gilded Fly

[white_hart]

I've enjoyed a couple of Edmund Crispin's Gervase Fen novels in the past, but this one rather left me cold (and it was the second time I'd tried it; the first time I gave up two chapters in). It just felt rather silly; the characters were thin and sometimes rather hard to distinguish, so that I kept having to flip back to the first chapter to remind myself who they were, the plot felt very contrived, and the Oxford setting wasn't well enough realised to give me any sense of the book being set in a place I know. This is Crispin's first novel, so it may just be that he improved significantly between this and the others of his I've read.

Comments

[legionseagle]

I rather like Buchan's women -- he's definitely got a type (the "high-minded boys in dresses" mould that Alison and Janet and Mary and to some extent Kore Arabin fall into) but they are allowed to transcend that type (cf Mary in The Three Hostages) and they don't usually need rescuing - well, Kore does, but it's a team effort. And I like his older women who aren't fooled.

[white_hart]

I like Buchan's women too, but some of his books are very light on female characters.

In "older women who aren't fooled", I particularly love Mrs Morran in Hungtingtower.

[tree_and_leaf]

Phemie Morran is fab.