Favorite Books and Current Reads

[Maxine MagicFox]

[Maxine MagicFox]

SO! I finally got around to reading and finishing up Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None book. I gotta say - it was a good book, I can't lie.

However... :\ maybe I'm spoiled from Umineko and Higurashi, but it wasn't very... mysterious. I think it was that there was no real connection between the people so there was very little emotional value and the fact that it was such an omnipresent view, apart from Vera, there wasn't much to connect me to the character.

As for the solution: (And let the spoils begin!)
[spoiler]
I guessed the killer BECAUSE of the OMNIPRESENT view. I was given insight into everyone's thoughts - EXCEPT Wargrave. I think the view switched to him once or twice.

Also, it was the only connection I could come up with for why the people were there. Who would KNOW if they were guilty of these crimes, it was either Blore or Wargrave. And since Blore was still alive and was the center of attention during the "red herring" portion of the story *shrugs* Wargrave it was.

*sigh* <_< I need a better challenge than that.

I think I was also disappointed with how unsophisticated the murders were. Actually only Vera's really made me go "oooooh" at the end and think "oh that's so Higurashi with the chair and all" and even think "god I wonder how he did convince her to kill herself". But at the end it was only "Oh, I just 'created an atmosphere' and HEY SHE WENT WITH IT!" ............... Very disappointing. I was like "oooh, was there some sort of hallucinogen on Armstrong's body or maybe in the house or something like that.
[/spoiler]

Still, it was a good book and I look forward to reading more. I'm sure there are others that will interest me far more and have more character depth.

[scy]

Well.
[spoiler]The psychological warfare, as it were, to lead up to Vera's death is interesting, though it's rather weakly set up. I hate the notion of drugs to interfere so I, personally, am glad when we skip out poisons as the cause of death or hallucinogens to change behavior or anything of the sort. But I'm weird in the sense of liking the idea of knowing behavior to the point of control; to bad at times it turns into omnipotence rather than deduction.

And Then There Were None is neat in the sense it's rooted in reality but, yeah, a lot of surprise is lost in the presentation. It wholly expects you to fall for the red herring as the sole means of misdirection. There's not much surprise in the deaths or how they occur, more a global "why do these deaths occur?" motif. It lacks punch, though, since these people hardly matter in the end.[/spoiler]

[Maxine MagicFox]

[scy]

Preferably newer mystery novels, eh? Was going to suggest Van Dine or Knox's novels as they created the rubric for (decent) reason.

I haven't read a recent mystery novel, though, so I don't precisely know from personal experience. "Mystery" is a broad term and you're really looking more for the Detective Fiction ones as that's the catch-all for the whodunnits, though that's more the Christie novels (i..e, the Poirot series) types.

Edit: Though, if you liked Agatha Christie's writing style, the Poirot novels are a lot more straight-up detective ... detecting type writing.

Off-hand, Rex Stout is one of the best mystery-detective fiction-"puzzle" authors; hell, I believe he was nominated Mystery Writer of the Century ... though Agatha Christie won that, if I recall, so ... anyway, his Nero Wolfe series (Fer-de-lance is the first and it spans 41 years with A Family Affair ending it all in 1975; I don't count his posthumous release as part of them since it's a series of novellas lumped together) is a great example of a long series of whodunnit tales.

If you want a good locked room murder mystery (though not always a locked room, per se), John Dickerson Carr / Carter Dickson is known as the master of it though I'm not particularly familiar with his works.

I'd stick to the Golden Age first and branching out after it.

Edit: Just some free thought composition:
[spoiler]I never found Higurashi to be a good "mystery" in and of itself. I mean, yes, there's the overall mystery of the puppet master behind the scenes and of who is killing Rika throughout but, at the same time, it's also more framed as a thriller. It plays out with you at the edge of your seat dealing with the scenes you see. The horror of the characters, the terror that is built up, the brutality of the murders. There's little mystery to those parts. The mystery is elsewhere in the conspiracy, not the murders themselves. Not to take anything from the series as it works because it's a thriller.

As for Umineko ... now that everything is done, I feel ... let down as a mystery. It reels us in with the intrigue, with the characters, with the mystery of everything. It builds a traditional mystery and layers more mystery with the fact or fiction elements of the mystery and fantasy elements.

...but...it then leaves us without a solution. The mystery is never completed. We're left without the payoff that makes a mystery a full mystery story. Open to interpretation, for me, doesn't make a good mystery. A mystery needs the solution. It needs the "a-ha" moment. The reveal. The culmination of everything we went through as a reader.

Spoilers within a spoiler [hide]Yes, Umineko doesn't want the mystery to be solved as that's not the point of the story; knowing the solution goes against the ultimate goal of Umineko. The open to interpretation result is what we're to take away. That not everything is to be known. That knowing the solution is to ignore the mystery as an event that touches people.[/hide]

Ultimately, this all means nothing besides I can't really think of anything that fits Higurashi besides thrillers (James Patterson pop-thrillers, for instance). Umineko, I can think of a few similar stories but the setup of Umineko is done purposefully to avoid the mystery so there's more layers of mystery that your typical mystery doesn't have. Yes, this sentence makes little sense right now but it will (maybe) when you're fully done with Umineko.

Now, to go completely elsewhere, I bring up James Patterson and it makes me think of why I fell out of the books. Yeah, they're quick to consume, pop-fiction stories. But they were gruesome. They were brutal. They were smart. The tacky steamy romance bits aside, they were crafted well enough and they kept me interested in the action and the atrocity and satisfied with the conclusions.

Then, we get a serial killer in the Cross series. He's different than the rest. The first manly-man killer; the rest before were killers, yes, but they were smart and conniving. This one is different. He's every bit as devious. As demented. As twisted. But he's also superhuman. Not a broken pencil-pusher or desk jockey. He's a bear of a man compared to the rest. And he escapes.

But, he's brought back at a point to demonstrate the cruelty and resourcefulness of the new serial killer of the [s]week[/s] quarter. The power and reach of that man and the sheer terror of him is able to bring down the bear into a sheep that joins the flock. Probably symbolic of something but it's a stark contrast of the original characterization that it stands out. Yet, it gets worse. He dies. Anti-climatically. Taken down mid-book in an almost throw-away manner. And the big bad responsible of it all? Taken down even more anti-climatically. It's a huge ripoff of build-up and tension. The scapegoats get more drama and suspense attached to them than the real guy does.

Yes, symbolic to the end that these are just men with power ... but are still men. But it felt so divorced from the normal procedure of the villains. The others that die are killed at the height of their relative notoriety in a manner befitting of them. These two are taken down like strays that wandered in off the street and then put themselves down while no one was watching.

I've yet to read any of his works since.[/spoiler]

Edit: I've said it before but god do I love my mechanical keyboard. I didn't even realize I was going on so long. So much fun to type on.

[beekee]

[PLA]

Mysteries without solutions are glimmer. Defective jigsaws sold at full price. Sometimes just smokescreens. :3

[Maxine MagicFox]

[Doktor_Q]

[scy]

[Maxine MagicFox]

LOL, Q, you misunderstand me. Yes, footprints are very important. Yes. But... :3 I am a fan of NCIS and SVU. (Don't like CSI... the people were assholes most of the time.)

Also, I don't like the whole Detective-with-God-complex. Nor do I like that the police are idiots, though considering the setting it's understandable.

And, yes, I'm going to read the rest of Holmes. Started reading the second story this morning.

Seriously though, considering the first story, I still don't feel Holmes is a "mystery". It felt like a "Crime" story. I was NOT presented with all of the facts (Holmes went out of his way telling Watson - oh, just wait until the finale, I got this). Nor was I able or presented with the chance to come up with the solution myself. I hope the other stories do a better job.

[scy]

[Maxine MagicFox]

I couldn't stand watching Criminal Intent. God the cases looked SO AWESOME, but I fucking HATED the main actors. No, the one acted half the time like there was something... wrong... like I don't want to call him a retard, but that there were just a few marbles loose. One of those gifted mentally-impaired people (suvaunt or something?) Whatever, he got on my nerves.

And Gibbs doesn't have a God complex, and if you think so then you haven't watched enough episodes. A "Father" complex, definitely, and he feels restricted by the laws he's trying to uphold and has no qualms breaking them. But, no, he's not arrogant, though he loves getting one over on his team :3 and it always feels like he's secretly laughing at them.


And NCIS is definitely PROBABLY winning. Though, the three episodes I watched of Bones was definitely in the running. o_O;

[PLA]

[Maxine MagicFox]