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Once, in the long-ago days when time still had a meaning, there was a golden thread in which the great sleuths of The Book Barn read through the classic mysteries of the genre, attempting to solve them before reaching the end. That time has, once again, come upon us. Here is how this works:
Past Books: The Body on the Beach, by Simon Brett The Problem of the Green Capsule, by John Dickson Carr She Died a Lady, by John Dickson Carr A Murder is Announced, by Agatha Christie And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie Crooked House, by Agatha Christie The Moving Finger, by Agatha Christie Murder is Easy, by Agatha Christie Pit Prop Syndicate, by Freeman Wills Crofts The Ponson Case, by Freeman Wills Crofts Cat of Many Tails, by Ellery Queen Thus Was Adonis Murdered, by Sarah Caudwell Murder by the Book, by Rex Stout The Blind Barber, by John Dickson Carr Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert Books Planned for Future Challenges The Shortest Way to Hades, by Sarah Caudwell Murder in the Dark, by Kerry Greenwood Death and the Dancing Footman, by Ngaio Marsh Stop Press, by Michael Innes Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Oct 4, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 04:49
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 01:55 |
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For this inaugural read-along, I plan to start with Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir. Amazon link Google Play Books link People have said a lot of things about Gideon the Ninth. For example, they said that it was about lesbian necromancers in space, which got a lot of play. However, I got interested when somebody said that it was more like "Tumblr Agatha Christie." Upon reading it myself, I was able to confirm that this is indeed a classical whodunnit, and a ton of fun, and eminently qualified for a proper read-along. So, here we go: our first reading of the book is going to be Act One, the first eight chapters. I'd like to end this phase next week, so that everybody has plenty of time to get started. Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Aug 14, 2020 |
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Aug 14, 2020 04:49
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Well, the first eight is just the setup; it's okay if people don't start forming theories until the murders actually start.
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Aug 15, 2020 05:23
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Excellent; I'm glad to see someone joining in. I was kind of worried that everybody had already read the book and that I should maybe switch to something more obscure. I think Gideon can read, she just prefers to read the equivalent of Men's Health for lesbians who love military chic and machismo. Which is interesting, because apparently she was able to get that on the Ninth. Who was ordering all those titty magazines when the planet is basically set up to spite her specifically? Is it illegal in the necro-empire to prevent teenagers from having access to soft porn?
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Aug 17, 2020 22:10
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Foxfire_ posted:I will play. Is this a fair mystery book? I burned out of the last thread after the bullshit that was The Pit Prop Syndicate Having read it, I'm prepared to call it a fair mystery book, yes. (Although this is something people can disagree about.) Anyway, I was able to solve the mystery, which is the important thing.
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Aug 19, 2020 00:17
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Anyway, we won't move on until Friday, so there's plenty of time to get started! Honestly, there's time to get started after that as well, since our next reading segment will take us to some actual Crimes.
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Aug 19, 2020 15:10
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Okay, let's get started! You may now read to the end of Act Two. Now, at least, we have some bodies. Some recent bodies, at least. Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Aug 22, 2020 |
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Aug 21, 2020 14:43
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Steely Glint posted:Ortus died on the way back to his home planet? ...ugh. That is actually my own stupid mistake about readers know at this point, although it isn’t critical. I shall remove it.
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Aug 22, 2020 06:07
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Must have missed that. Shows how much Gideon cared about him, anyway, if I managed to gloss right over her reaction to that.
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Okay, let's move on. Henceforward I'm going to move forward a bit more often in smaller chunks, now that we've gotten the beginning exposition out of the way and got some juicy murders under our belt. Please continue on until the end of Chapter Twenty.
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Aug 28, 2020 19:12
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Foxfire_ posted:All of the racing and secrecy in general seems possibly unwarranted, the whole ordeal was presented as possible for everyone to win at (or no one to win at) It's definitely interesting that Teacher is all smiles and "of course you can all rise to Lyctorhood together" but is also all "by the way there are no rules." What is the intention behind this game? quote:Ortus's mom is an immigrant from the 8th who married into the 9th, which is pretty weird with how the 8th heir/cavalier is treating Gideon/Harrow. From the cast list & epigraph at the beginning, the 8th seems like the priesthood for the non-9th religion I guess someone has to be, since the Ninth House doesn't seem to provide any useful function other than making sure the Locked Tomb stays that way, to the point that the House basically doesn't exist any longer and nobody has noticed. On the other hand, if keeping the Tomb locked is that important, why isn't anybody paying attention to what's going on there?
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Aug 28, 2020 19:15
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The other question is why has the Emperor kept all this super useful knowledge secret for thousands of years?
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Aug 29, 2020 03:36
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Let’s keep all the “talking about talking” in the Locked Tomb thread where we can be more explicit.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:15
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Foxfire_ posted:Thinking about it, the Transference/Winnowing test is very different if people are cooperating. Instead of jumping to "I must posses Gideon's mind!", socially-adjusted Harrow just goes and gets one of the other necromancers to push the button to open the door, walks into the Response chamber herself, and melts the construct with no trouble. I'm not actually sure Harrow could have done it "with no trouble" while it was trying to kill her. There's a reason why necromancers are traditionally paired with cavaliers.
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Aug 31, 2020 21:49
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Anyway, let's move on a bit. Please read to the end of Chapter Twenty-Five.
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Aug 31, 2020 21:52
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Okay, then! Go ahead and read to the end of Chapter Twenty-Nine. (There will be one more reading segment before I ask you to lock in your theories.) Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Sep 3, 2020 |
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Sep 3, 2020 12:29
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Okay, it's time for the home stretch! Read to the end of Chapter Thirty-Three. I will now ask you to lock in your final answers to the mystery: Who killed Magnus Quinn, Abigail Pent, Isaac Tettares and Jeannemary Chatur? Who, if it was related, killed Protesilaus Ebdoma, Ortus Nigenad, and Glaurica Nigenad? Who, if anybody, is in the furnace? WTF is up with absolutely everything?
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Sep 6, 2020 03:17
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I kind of feel like the Second might deserve more credit for taking the tack of "okay, it's time to stop treating this as a teaching exercise and start treating it as a horror movie or we're all going to die," which turned out to be absolutely correct even if they hosed up the execution.
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Sep 6, 2020 20:27
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I think we can go ahead and read to the end, yes.
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Sep 7, 2020 21:41
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It's mentioned in passing in the second book that Cytherea could absolutely have done better than that her zombie Protesilaus wouldn't have fooled anybody who knew the real guy for a second, and that her lovely reanimation just demonstrated how lazy and contemptuous she really was.
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Sep 8, 2020 00:04
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Good times! And we can still keep on discussing Gideon for a bit, but I'm thinking the next whodunnit is going to be Smallbone Deceased, by the unaccountably mostly-forgotten Michael Gilbert.
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Sep 8, 2020 22:50
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Okay, so! Our next book is going to be Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert.  Google Play link Kindle link quote:Horniman, Birley and Craine is a highly respected legal firm with clients drawn from the highest in the land. When a deed box in the office is opened to reveal a corpse, the threat of scandal promises to wreak havoc on the firm's reputation—especially as the murder looks like an inside job. The partners and staff of the firm keep a watchful and suspicious eye on their colleagues, as Inspector Hazlerigg sets out to solve the mystery of who Mr. Smallbone was—and why he had to die. Start by reading until the end of Chapter Three, which will get us all the way up to the murder. I'll give people a week to get started, so we'll move forward to the next reading on September 18th.
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Sep 11, 2020 03:43
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Google "lawyer's deed box" and you'll see that they can in fact be pretty darn big. The boxes used by Horniman, Birley, and Craine are probably a little bit bigger than that.
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Sep 14, 2020 04:58
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I meant to join in this read-along but I accidentally the whole thing For violating the sacred laws of the read-along, I am assigning you a book report on the life and works of Michael Gilbert.
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Sep 14, 2020 15:40
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Looks like we’re picking up steam! Go ahead and read to the end of Chapter Six.
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Sep 18, 2020 15:23
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Let’s get a move on! Go ahead and read to the end of Chapter Nine. Audible has made two different audiobooks of Smallbone Deceased, neither of which agrees with each other or me about how to pronounce “Bohun.” The first, which is now unavailable, although personally I liked it better, pronounced it “Beaune.” The newer pronounces it “Boone.” If asked, I would have said “Bow-an,” but I was not.
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Sep 22, 2020 14:20
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Goodness, I am sleepy, but we must continue. Read to the end of Chapter Fourteen. This is the last update before the solution, and I will now ask you to lock in your answers: Was Abel Horniman killed? If so, who did it? Who killed Marcus Smallbone, and why? Who killed Miss Chittering, and why?
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Sep 28, 2020 04:34
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Okay, I'm going to give it one more day before we reveal the solution, so finish up if you haven't!
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Oct 1, 2020 01:51
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Okay, go ahead and read to the end! Congratulations to Hobnob, who got it exactly right.
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Oct 1, 2020 22:03
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:I’m glad Bohun gets a saucer now If you hunt around there are actually a couple of short stories featuring Bohun, although he won't appear in any other novels.
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Oct 2, 2020 01:17
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Foxfire_ posted:Miss Cornel is not good at crimes. Put body in the Smallbone box, put the Smallbone papers in the next most unlikely to be opened box, done. I assume the boxes are sufficiently full of papers – and these are boxes big enough to fit a small body inside them – that you cannot just take the papers out of one and shove them into another because it wouldn’t fit. The main questionable element to me was Miss Cornel’s willingness to incriminate the son of the employer she was willing to kill for. I guess she thought he wasn’t a patch on his old man.
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Oct 3, 2020 05:01
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Antivehicular posted:I can completely buy Miss Cornel being willing to throw Bob under the bus. I suspect it was public knowledge in the non-Bohun portions of the office that Bob was phoning it in, hated the work, and probably was going to be a detriment to the firm if he'd stayed around; it's not hard to extrapolate from there that Miss Cornel viewed Bob as both an offense to Abel's memory and a real danger to her future. Framing Bob for the murders is still a mess and a stain on the Horniman name, but I can see how a sufficiently callous figure might view it as a necessary evil. That checks out; I was mostly surprised that nobody ever brings it up. Anyway, I was planning on the next book being The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cozy, but… it looks like it's no longer on the American ebook stores? That's a pain in the neck! Does anybody want to list a preference between:
Rand Brittain fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Oct 4, 2020 |
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Oct 4, 2020 17:39
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Foxfire_ posted:The Shortest Way to Hades say's its the second of a trilogy on Amazon. Is the first one important/spoiled for anything or is it just disconnected same-detective? It's one of the four Hilary Tamar books. We read the first one in a previous incarnation of this thread, but it's not necessary to read Thus Was Adonis Murdered first. All right, it looks like we'll be going with The Shortest Way to Hades! I'll get the post up tomorrow.
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Oct 5, 2020 05:05
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It is to my profound irritation that I note that you cannot buy The Shortest Way to Hades on ebook in the USA, either. What the gently caress, copyright law? I will instead go forward with Stop Press unless someone has a better suggestion.
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Oct 13, 2020 00:59
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Okay, let's (finally) get this started! Kindle link Michael Innes is one of my favorite forgotten mystery writers of the Golden Age, and I think one of the reasons he's largely forgotten and undervalued is that he's just so loving weird. I also think he's forgotten because his books all fall on a scale from "delightfully-bizarre phantasmagoria of mysterious events" ranging upward to "outright ridiculous parody," only his publishers keep billing him as being a serious mystery writer where Dark Events happen and then people get disappointed. Agora has been doing quite a decent line of reprints lately, but they all look super-serious and I think that's probably hurting them. He also had a quite decent career writing straight novels under his own name, J. I. M. Stewart, a name which incidentally is quite hard to get decent search results for! Anyway, Stop Press sees a number of miscellaneous figures called to the home of Richard Eliot, an incredibly-successful writer of detective stories, who is lately "doomed to the bin" as a result of mysterious pranks in which his villain-turned-detective, "the Spider," appears to be coming to life and tormenting his creator. This book is very long, very meandering, and my absolute favorite of all his works. Inflicting it upon you is going to be a joy for me. Start by reading to the end of Part One, Chapter Four.
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Oct 15, 2020 01:47
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Foxfire_ posted:Notes from chapter 1 Someone knows Elliot Sr's abandoned plans for the Spider => One of (1) he is the culprit, (2) he told someone [editor, ...], (3) he wrote it down somewhere [butler, maid, ...] The thing about these possibilities is that if Mr. Eliot thought that (2) or (3) could have happened, he wouldn't find someone else knowing about it surprising enough to threaten his mental balance.
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Oct 18, 2020 03:38
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Hobnob posted:Up to part 1, Ch. 4 Again, the thing about this is that if this was possible, it wouldn't be worrying Mr. Elliott to the point of mental disturbance; he'd just say, 'oh, they must have read it in the draft stage.' Things are a bit slow, probably because we've changed books twice in midstream, but I'll go ahead and say read to the end of Chapter Six.
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Oct 22, 2020 02:46
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Things are a bit slow this time, but hopefully it picks up now that the thread title has been corrected. Go ahead and read to the end of Part One (so, Chapter Nine).
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Oct 29, 2020 17:47
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Well, it's been approximately ten years since our last update, but that's no reason not to press on! Read to the end of Part Two, Chapter Four.
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Nov 9, 2020 02:27
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I think this one might be dead. Curse you, copyright, and the double-derail that killed our momentum! Curse you!!!!!
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Nov 28, 2020 19:05
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 01:55 |
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Ehehehehehesomeone actually finished itFoxfire_ posted:Winter uses his skills as a middle-aged Oxford classics professor to find a time when the house is empty, drug the pack of dogs, break into the house, steal stuff, then dump the stolen items off, all without leaving any evidence behind. This is just how Oxford dons are. I can see that if you're an American or a Cambridge man you might not know this. quote:1. As adults are fundamentally incapable of creating new fictional ideas (all the psychologist/academic characters nod approvingly), all of Eliot's novels are subconsciously repackaging ideas he and Rupert had when they were 10. This is how Rupert knows unpublished plot details This bit is interesting to me because… Innes is the same kind of writer as Elliot (although much less successful) so this kind of ambivalent attitude to his own work seems to be one they share. quote:5. Oops, explosion collapsed the building I'm pretty sure he collapsed the building on purpose after getting a chance to see the collection and deciding it was indecent. Thank you for reading my favorite terrible book.
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Apr 12, 2021 14:47
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