This year I completed 148 novels, novellas (90 pages or more) and scripts. Late in the year when I realized I was getting close to 150 I tried to get in a few quick reads to reach a nice round number, but it just didn't work out. December is a really busy time for me. 148 is still a lot of of books, and the most I've managed since I started keeping track in 2000, except for last year, when I read 253. I doubt that I will ever manage that number again, as it requires doing almost nothing with my free time except reading. And I like reading, but do have other hobbies. On the other hand, I might have done quite a bit better this year if I hadn't taken up Farmville in April. It's fun, but it eats a lot of time. I think one of my resolutions for 2012 may be to spend less time playing Farmville.
I tried keeping a spreadsheet this year in addition to my paper records in the hope that I'd be able to sort the data and make it easier to come up with my numbers, but the online spreadsheet I was using didn't sort things quite as easily as I've grown to expect when using Excel. Nevertheless, it did allow me to track more categories than I usually do.
So, in 2011, here is what I read:
47 fantasy
37 mystery
22 romance
5 horror
4 urban fantasy
4 nonfiction
3 paranormals
2 suspense
1 alternate history
and the remainder were general fiction of one sort or another. As last year, many of them were male/male stories of one sort or another -- mystery, romance, fantasy, etc. However this year I only read 56 gay works of 90 pages or longer (and lots of shorter works I didn't count), down considerably from last year's number.
I figure that I read
73 ebooks
32 hardcover
31 paperback
9 scripts
3 audiobooks
Of those, I bought 88, 38 were from the library, 12 were free works, and 10 were borrowed.
By far, the most unpleasant books I read this year were Embassytown by China Mieville, which I had to finish because I'd received an ARC and was required to write a review; and Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, which I finished so that no one could dismiss my review when I honestly said I didn't like it. Both those books were a a very unpleasant slog.
It's harder to pick the books I enjoyed most. My reading resolution this year was to read entirely according to my whims, whatever I felt like reading, whatever appealed to me, without worrying about what I "should" be reading. I even decided not to bother reading the Hugo Award nominees this year, something I always do in the years when I am eligible to vote. But because I didn't read anything that wasn't appealing to me (with the exception of the two works listed above, and what a waste of time they both were) I had a good reading year. There are many, many things on my list that I enjoyed, though not all of them were outstanding. So let me just pick a few:
I started reading the Ceepak & Boyle mysteries by Chris Grabenstein. They are set in a seaside town in New Jersey and feature two cops, one a former military man with a very firm moral code, and the other his young partner, who has a wonderfully amusing and distinctive narrative voice. They're just a pleasure to read, and I've got my mystery book group reading the first one for this month's selection. Hopefully they will enjoy it as much as I did.
Crack'd Pot Trail by Steven Erikson was not at all what I was expecting. It's a novella in a series about a couple of necromancers who travel around and get into trouble. However the main characters barely make an appearance in the story. It is, instead, a sort of fantasy re-telling of the Canterbury Tales, except with cannibalism. Once I finally stopped trying to figure out when the usual characters would appear, I was treated to a very dark and very darkly funny story.
Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovich is a paranormal police procedural set in London. A young police officer discovers that he can see dead people, and ends up apprenticed the the police's only wizard. London is richly painted, and it was a compelling read. I believe I gulped it down in one sitting. I have the second one in my TBR pile, and will definitely get to it in 2012.
Aloes by Chris Quinton is a paranormal gay romance, in which a man who suffered a severe head injury now discovers that he has synaethesia -- he can tell when people are lying or telling the truth.
I also really enjoyed Truth in the Dark by Amy Lane, which is a gay twist on Beauty and the Beast, in which a very homely and crippled man goes to live for a year with a beautiful lion-man, and they struggle with their perceptions of which is the beauty and which is the beast. I put off reading this one for quite a while because I wasn't at all sure about it as described, but it turned out to be a really good read, and Amy Lane is working her way onto my list of favorite male/male writers.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Trouble in Mudbug by Jana DeLeon
I started out enjoying this one, but by the end was not. I'm not sure it's even worth wasting the time to enumerate the ways in which this one didn't work for me, but hey, why not?
I think that part of the problem I had with this novel was one of expectation. Whether it's fair or not, I went into this expecting a funny mystery. The main character, Maryse, is a botanist who lives in a bayou near a little town in Louisiana. Her mother-in-law, Helena, who she fully believes was evil, has died. Unfortunately that is not the end of her dealings with the woman, who is now a ghost and following Maryse around, trying to get her to figure out who killed her. Meanwhile a very sexy man has shown up at her office and flashed her a winning smile, and she's not sure what to do about it.
I was expecting a funny mystery in which we probably find out who murdered Helena. That's not what this book is, though. For one thing -- spoilers ahead! -- we don't find out who killed Helena. However Helena has left Maryse some property and under some arcane covenants on the property Maryse can't leave the town limits for one week until the paperwork is finalized. Meanwhile someone is trying, rather clumsily, to kill Maryse. But frankly that isn't the plot of the novel, either, it's just an excuse for a Woman in Peril story in which Luc, Mister Winning Smile, gets to protect her and win her over.
I had many problems with this novel. First of all, the only likable character is Helena, the supposedly-evil ghost. Maryse was pretty awful, her two friends weren't any better, and Luc was portrayed very inconsistently. Maryse knows someone is trying to kill her. Helena keeps saying there are important things they need to talk about, and Maryse keeps refusing to talk to her, saying that she's too busy and to go away. Yeah, that's the way to handle a dangerous situation -- try not to gather any useful information that could help you. Meanwhile the love interest is portrayed very inconsistently. We start out with him portrayed -- in his own point of view -- as a good looking ladies man who is there to charm Maryse to find out what he needs. In other words, the sort of man who uses his looks and uses women for his own gain. However later we are told that he's always leaping in to rescue women, which is not at all consistent with the earlier description, in his own head. Huh.
There is also the problem of the town of Mudbug, population 500. We are told that it has eight buildings (by which I suppose they mean a business district with 8 buildings). It's a very small place. However over the course of the novel we find out it has a hospital, two hotels, a cafe, and a very fancy restaurant that you need to get a reservation at weeks in advance. Umm, towns of 500 people don't have hospitals, and who the hell is filling up a restaurant in a town of 500 people to the extent you can't get a table without reserving weeks in advance? Presumably not the locals, given that Maryse has only eaten there once in her life. Also, Maryse is not able to leave the city limits, and yet she spends quite a bit of time out in the bayou. Is that within the city limits? I'm confused, and Mudbug was one of the things that strained credibility.
It got far worse, though. Maryse is a botanist, who is searching the bayou looking for "the" cure for cancer, as if such a thing could possibly exist. That one destroyed my willing suspension of disbelief, and DeLeon never regained my trust. Further, the samples that she's sending off to a lab for testing are flying through the tests at a truly impossible rate. The book only covers a few days, and yet we're told by the lab that two rounds of tests were successful. Medical testing simply doesn't operate at that pace. And then we eventually learn that the plants she's found aren't really a cure for cancer, but they're growing in polluted water and are therefore radioactive (!!!) and feeding it to someone is like giving them radiation treatment. (!!!!!!!) Holy schnikes, that's bad writing. I mean really, really bad.
After that, what more can I say? She is shot at and her cabin explodes, but she doesn't spend more than a few moments talking to the police. Her mother-in-law and good-for-nothing ex-husband both explain that they treated her badly because she was such a good person. At the end she instantly develops a completely new outlook on life, and now everything will be just fine. And she and Luc develop insta-love, even though they haven't taken the time to actually get to know each other. And there is still the question of who killed Helena hanging in the background so we can make it a series. Gah. It started out sharp and funny. Why did it have to turn out so bad?
I think that part of the problem I had with this novel was one of expectation. Whether it's fair or not, I went into this expecting a funny mystery. The main character, Maryse, is a botanist who lives in a bayou near a little town in Louisiana. Her mother-in-law, Helena, who she fully believes was evil, has died. Unfortunately that is not the end of her dealings with the woman, who is now a ghost and following Maryse around, trying to get her to figure out who killed her. Meanwhile a very sexy man has shown up at her office and flashed her a winning smile, and she's not sure what to do about it.
I was expecting a funny mystery in which we probably find out who murdered Helena. That's not what this book is, though. For one thing -- spoilers ahead! -- we don't find out who killed Helena. However Helena has left Maryse some property and under some arcane covenants on the property Maryse can't leave the town limits for one week until the paperwork is finalized. Meanwhile someone is trying, rather clumsily, to kill Maryse. But frankly that isn't the plot of the novel, either, it's just an excuse for a Woman in Peril story in which Luc, Mister Winning Smile, gets to protect her and win her over.
I had many problems with this novel. First of all, the only likable character is Helena, the supposedly-evil ghost. Maryse was pretty awful, her two friends weren't any better, and Luc was portrayed very inconsistently. Maryse knows someone is trying to kill her. Helena keeps saying there are important things they need to talk about, and Maryse keeps refusing to talk to her, saying that she's too busy and to go away. Yeah, that's the way to handle a dangerous situation -- try not to gather any useful information that could help you. Meanwhile the love interest is portrayed very inconsistently. We start out with him portrayed -- in his own point of view -- as a good looking ladies man who is there to charm Maryse to find out what he needs. In other words, the sort of man who uses his looks and uses women for his own gain. However later we are told that he's always leaping in to rescue women, which is not at all consistent with the earlier description, in his own head. Huh.
There is also the problem of the town of Mudbug, population 500. We are told that it has eight buildings (by which I suppose they mean a business district with 8 buildings). It's a very small place. However over the course of the novel we find out it has a hospital, two hotels, a cafe, and a very fancy restaurant that you need to get a reservation at weeks in advance. Umm, towns of 500 people don't have hospitals, and who the hell is filling up a restaurant in a town of 500 people to the extent you can't get a table without reserving weeks in advance? Presumably not the locals, given that Maryse has only eaten there once in her life. Also, Maryse is not able to leave the city limits, and yet she spends quite a bit of time out in the bayou. Is that within the city limits? I'm confused, and Mudbug was one of the things that strained credibility.
It got far worse, though. Maryse is a botanist, who is searching the bayou looking for "the" cure for cancer, as if such a thing could possibly exist. That one destroyed my willing suspension of disbelief, and DeLeon never regained my trust. Further, the samples that she's sending off to a lab for testing are flying through the tests at a truly impossible rate. The book only covers a few days, and yet we're told by the lab that two rounds of tests were successful. Medical testing simply doesn't operate at that pace. And then we eventually learn that the plants she's found aren't really a cure for cancer, but they're growing in polluted water and are therefore radioactive (!!!) and feeding it to someone is like giving them radiation treatment. (!!!!!!!) Holy schnikes, that's bad writing. I mean really, really bad.
After that, what more can I say? She is shot at and her cabin explodes, but she doesn't spend more than a few moments talking to the police. Her mother-in-law and good-for-nothing ex-husband both explain that they treated her badly because she was such a good person. At the end she instantly develops a completely new outlook on life, and now everything will be just fine. And she and Luc develop insta-love, even though they haven't taken the time to actually get to know each other. And there is still the question of who killed Helena hanging in the background so we can make it a series. Gah. It started out sharp and funny. Why did it have to turn out so bad?
Sunday, December 25, 2011
The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett
This is a collection of Hammett's stories dating from 1924 - 1930. They all feature a nameless detective who works for the Continental Detective Agency. We know little about him, save that he is 35 - 40 years old when the stories take place, and overweight. Hammett worked for the Pinkertons before he turned to a career of writing, and I have to wonder if the Continental Op's work life is anything like realistic. I would have to say probably not, most of the time. But the flow of his work day, in which he rarely reports in, keeps his own hours, and even once decides to insert himself into a situation the agency hasn't been hired to work on, just because he thinks something interesting might happen -- it's a far cry from modern ideals of employee behavior. And I just suspect that it might not be that far off reality -- the last few decades have been obsessed with maximizing employee efficiency, and I sometimes get the sense that earlier in the twentieth century, work was often taken at a more leisurely pace than it is today.
I am also curious about his relationship with the law. The police usually seem quite content to work with the detective, which isn't so common today. Further, they seem to take his word for it when he's right in the middle of a fight and few people get out alive. These days, the police would look very carefully at his actions to determine if he should be charged, but in these stories he seems to be outside the law. And his behavior is also very much outside the law. These stories are from the Prohibition era and, like in The Thin Man, they all drink constantly. The Op gets into fistfights, shoots people, steals a car and runs someone down while pursuing a villain, holds up a couple of thieves at gunpoint and takes their loot and then doesn't turn the money over to the police, lies, manipulates people, and once performs surveillance on a man by going on a three day bender with him in Tijuana, during which three innocent people are murdered. He frames someone for a crime he didn't commit because he can't nail him for a crime he did commit. He shoots and kills a man who was carrying an unloaded gun without waiting to see if the man was going to try to harm him. He gets indignant with a client who suspects that his murdered employee might be having an affair with his wife, because he, the operative, isn't going to bother with gossip like that, he only cares about the murder--and when he finds his client was right, he goes out of his way to help the wife conceal the affair.
Really, the operative acts as judge, jury, and executioner. And nearly every woman in the stories is a con artist, crook, or just a manipulative liar. I do understand that stories like these written for the pulps weren't intended to be at all realistic, but taking them in a whole I really do wonder about Hammett's attitudes. I know I shouldn't read too much into them, as they are fiction. But man, this guy wrote ugly stuff, and I am reasonably sure we weren't supposed to look at his protagonist with disgust. Still, this is taking an anti-hero too far. Anti-heroes need at least some sort of moral or ethical code they're acting by, and I don't see any such thing in the operative.
I am also curious about his relationship with the law. The police usually seem quite content to work with the detective, which isn't so common today. Further, they seem to take his word for it when he's right in the middle of a fight and few people get out alive. These days, the police would look very carefully at his actions to determine if he should be charged, but in these stories he seems to be outside the law. And his behavior is also very much outside the law. These stories are from the Prohibition era and, like in The Thin Man, they all drink constantly. The Op gets into fistfights, shoots people, steals a car and runs someone down while pursuing a villain, holds up a couple of thieves at gunpoint and takes their loot and then doesn't turn the money over to the police, lies, manipulates people, and once performs surveillance on a man by going on a three day bender with him in Tijuana, during which three innocent people are murdered. He frames someone for a crime he didn't commit because he can't nail him for a crime he did commit. He shoots and kills a man who was carrying an unloaded gun without waiting to see if the man was going to try to harm him. He gets indignant with a client who suspects that his murdered employee might be having an affair with his wife, because he, the operative, isn't going to bother with gossip like that, he only cares about the murder--and when he finds his client was right, he goes out of his way to help the wife conceal the affair.
Really, the operative acts as judge, jury, and executioner. And nearly every woman in the stories is a con artist, crook, or just a manipulative liar. I do understand that stories like these written for the pulps weren't intended to be at all realistic, but taking them in a whole I really do wonder about Hammett's attitudes. I know I shouldn't read too much into them, as they are fiction. But man, this guy wrote ugly stuff, and I am reasonably sure we weren't supposed to look at his protagonist with disgust. Still, this is taking an anti-hero too far. Anti-heroes need at least some sort of moral or ethical code they're acting by, and I don't see any such thing in the operative.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Chloe, 1998 - 2011
Today I had to put down my cat, Chloe. The sword that had been hanging over us since her diagnosis of kidney disease finally fell. She stopped eating a few days ago, and today I took her in and my fears were realized. I've been through this before, with Oscar, who also had kidney failure. I watched him decline, and didn't want to put her through that, too.
We'd only been together about three years. I adopted her, and her sister Mina, from the Humane Society in 2008 after Oscar died. Mina lasted six months before a cancer diagnosis, and the surgery we tried was not enough to save her. Now Chloe is gone, too.
She was the sweetest, calmest, most easy-going cat I've ever met. She was incredibly affectionate and soothing to me. She purred easily, didn't mind having her claws trimmed, and was happiest when lying on me. I loved her more than I can express, and I am going to miss her terribly.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
I read this one in my project to work my way through the piles of unread books that are sitting around. I picked this one up a few months ago during the Borders liquidation. The buying frenzy was apparently on, and I came home with an armful of books, and later looked at some of them and wondered why I had bought them.
I bought Who Fears Death simply because a lot of people were saying good things about it online, which isn't necessarily a good reason to pick up a book. I kept hearing that it was different and original and amazing, so I bought it, even though what I heard about the story didn't necessarily catch my interest.
It is the story of an girl in an Africa-like setting who is obviously a half-breed, whose mother was raped, along with all the other women, and their village burned. Half-breed children like our narrator are viewed as evil and dangerous, and so she has an uncomfortable childhood, despite a loving mother and step-father. And she is an odd, angry child, who develops powers she does not understand or control very well.
This book read too much like YA fiction to me, which is probably partly why I didn't like it. The first half of the book is a coming of age story, and I strongly dislike that story type and usually try to avoid them. Then as she comes into young adulthood and explores her powers and her relationship with a particular young man, she and her friends leave their town to embark on a quest to right injustices that their elders are too complacent to address. I'm simplifying somewhat, but that's what it boils down to, and again, is why this feels like YA. And as they travel they act like 20 year olds, and I could have happily dropped them all down a hole and gone on with my life.
This is a fairly well-written book, don't get me wrong. But it's also a book with a story I didn't enjoy at all, with characters I didn't like, doing things I didn't care about. I did not enjoy the heavy hand of Fate that was obviously pushing them along, nor the promise quite early on that the end of the book is going to be grim, and then there's the female circumcision--if you're going to include that, it seems like a cop-out to me to have her able to later magically undo it.
So, overall: this book has gotten a lot of rave reviews and a World Fantasy Award. But it just wasn't at all enjoyable to me.
I bought Who Fears Death simply because a lot of people were saying good things about it online, which isn't necessarily a good reason to pick up a book. I kept hearing that it was different and original and amazing, so I bought it, even though what I heard about the story didn't necessarily catch my interest.
It is the story of an girl in an Africa-like setting who is obviously a half-breed, whose mother was raped, along with all the other women, and their village burned. Half-breed children like our narrator are viewed as evil and dangerous, and so she has an uncomfortable childhood, despite a loving mother and step-father. And she is an odd, angry child, who develops powers she does not understand or control very well.
This book read too much like YA fiction to me, which is probably partly why I didn't like it. The first half of the book is a coming of age story, and I strongly dislike that story type and usually try to avoid them. Then as she comes into young adulthood and explores her powers and her relationship with a particular young man, she and her friends leave their town to embark on a quest to right injustices that their elders are too complacent to address. I'm simplifying somewhat, but that's what it boils down to, and again, is why this feels like YA. And as they travel they act like 20 year olds, and I could have happily dropped them all down a hole and gone on with my life.
This is a fairly well-written book, don't get me wrong. But it's also a book with a story I didn't enjoy at all, with characters I didn't like, doing things I didn't care about. I did not enjoy the heavy hand of Fate that was obviously pushing them along, nor the promise quite early on that the end of the book is going to be grim, and then there's the female circumcision--if you're going to include that, it seems like a cop-out to me to have her able to later magically undo it.
So, overall: this book has gotten a lot of rave reviews and a World Fantasy Award. But it just wasn't at all enjoyable to me.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Mechanique by Genevieve Valentine
I picked this one up at Worldcon. I have noticed recently that, as I greatly prefer reading ebooks over paper books, I haven't been reading the paper books in the TBR pile. Therefore I am making a deliberate effort to start working my way through the stack of paper books.
Mechanique is set in the future, after a big war that has pretty much destroyed everything, and through continuous smaller wars and the rise and fall of governments as the world tries to find stability again. It is set in a traveling circus, a circus of mechanically enhanced performers, a show of freak acts. The main narrator is Little George, a young man who was adopted into the circus as a small child, and who wants desperately to become one of the performers himself. George explains about the circus in scattered fashion, and keeps dropping hints that things are darker than they seem.
Though there is eventually a plot, it takes a long time to develop. The first half of the book is a character study of the circus, slowly revealing all the characters and how they work together as a unit. In many cases this would bore me silly, but not here--it's actually an absorbing and fascinating read. George jumps around a lot, revealing a little bit at a time, and eventually the reader realizes things about the circus, without George really spelling them out. It's very well done.
A plot eventually develops, in the form of a government man whose ambitions will not bode well for the circus, and it's time for them to either work together or fall apart. It's a bit bitter in its outcome, but George makes it clear from the very beginning that this won't be a happy story, and it fit.
Mechanique is an unusual novel, dark and interesting and indirect. It squats across the science fiction/fantasy line, containing elements of both, which I often enjoy. Overall, it's a really good read. Recommended.
Mechanique is set in the future, after a big war that has pretty much destroyed everything, and through continuous smaller wars and the rise and fall of governments as the world tries to find stability again. It is set in a traveling circus, a circus of mechanically enhanced performers, a show of freak acts. The main narrator is Little George, a young man who was adopted into the circus as a small child, and who wants desperately to become one of the performers himself. George explains about the circus in scattered fashion, and keeps dropping hints that things are darker than they seem.
Though there is eventually a plot, it takes a long time to develop. The first half of the book is a character study of the circus, slowly revealing all the characters and how they work together as a unit. In many cases this would bore me silly, but not here--it's actually an absorbing and fascinating read. George jumps around a lot, revealing a little bit at a time, and eventually the reader realizes things about the circus, without George really spelling them out. It's very well done.
A plot eventually develops, in the form of a government man whose ambitions will not bode well for the circus, and it's time for them to either work together or fall apart. It's a bit bitter in its outcome, but George makes it clear from the very beginning that this won't be a happy story, and it fit.
Mechanique is an unusual novel, dark and interesting and indirect. It squats across the science fiction/fantasy line, containing elements of both, which I often enjoy. Overall, it's a really good read. Recommended.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Continuing on my old detective novel kick, this one is from 1933. It actually isn't in public domain--Hammett didn't die until the 1960s, so it's still under copyright. However I did find one short story by him in the public domain, and enjoyed it, which led me to the library to look for more.
It features Nick and Nora Charles, a gay, (in the old-fashioned sense) social couple who are well liked and obviously lots of fun. They, with their pet dog Asta, are spending the holidays in New York City so that they don't have to spend them with Nora's relatives. Nick was once a detective, but he gave that up when his (15 years younger) wife inherited a great deal of money. They spend the novel (I don't know if this is their normal behavior) getting drunk, staying up all night, and sleeping until noon.
The novel came out in 1933, the year Prohibition ended. I am guessing that this was written, and is set, during Prohibition, particularly since there are several mentions of speakeasies. Nevertheless, everyone in the book drinks like a fish.
They get involved with the mystery when Nick encounters Dorothy Wynant, a young woman of 19 or 20, in a speakeasy. She remembers him from some work he did for her father eight years previously, when he was still working as a detective. Her parents later divorced and she has been living with her mother in Europe, but now that she's back in New York she'd like to track down her father. Nick helps her track down her father's lawyer, and after that the mystery seems to chase after Nick and try to force him to get involved.
Dorothy Wynant has developed a crush on Nick, and keeps appearing at their hotel for sympathy and to plead that she's afraid of her mother. Her mother, who Nick knows, and dislikes, from his earlier business with Clyde Wynant, finds her ex-husband's secretary, murdered. Dorothy's younger brother, Gilbert, is very intelligent and has a particular interest in crime, and so he wants to corner Nick and ask him all sorts of questions about detective work. Plus Wynant's attorney, Macauley, is an old acquaintance of Nick's, and keeps contacting him to report on events, plus share what little information he has about his client, who is missing. Wynant himself sends Nick a letter asking him to look into the death of his secretary, and Nick and Nora are awakened in the middle of the night when a suspect in the woman's murder breaks in to try to convince Nick that he didn't kill her.
So, though Nick actually keeps insisting that he isn't interested in getting involved, nevertheless he ends up involved.
Together Nick and Nora seem to quite enjoy themselves as they work on the crime together. They're a fun couple, and fun companions for the reader. It is not surprising, then, that this novel was made into a movie in 1934, which led to it becoming a popular franchise as Nick and Nora and their little dog travel about, attend a lot of parties, and solve crimes, seemingly always to help out a pretty young woman who cries too easily. I've seen several of the films, but not recently. I was curious to watch the film again last night to see how the novel compared with the original film, but of course it wasn't available on Netflix streaming (that seems to be the story of Netflix streaming--it sounds like such a handy and wonderful idea, but whatever you want to watch is never available).
There are a few things that strain credibility, of course. For one thing, everyone loves the Charleses. They are the life of the party, and can do no wrong. The police like them, especially Nora. Criminals like them, even the ones Nick helped put in prison. And, for their part, they like most everyone, except Dorothy's mother. Nick takes Nora to a speakeasy owned by a former criminal so that they can chat with the man who forced his way into their bedroom in the middle of the night and tried to kill Nick, and Nora has a wonderful time, proclaiming afterward that the criminal classes are just marvelous, she couldn't even understand half the things they were talking about!
The Thin Man, the novel, is more complex than the film, which isn't surprising. There are multiple murders, and layers of lies to work through before the reveal at the end. Nevertheless, even if I hadn't already known who the killer was, I might have been able to guess it anyway--the clues are there. None of the characters in this novel are even slightly like real people, but they are interesting, and that is better than being realistic. Overall, I found this novel is quite a satisfying meal.
Edited to add: I have now watched the film again, and it resembles the book less than I had remembered. It is considerably simplified and they took the darkness out of many of the characters. In the book, Dorothy is a hard-drinking brat who is involved with a married man, and her mother an abusive would-be blackmailer who constantly lies. In the film, Dorothy and her father have a warm relationship and she is about to be married to a nice young man. In the films, Nick and Nora *always* seem to be helping a pretty young woman who wants to get married. The film also has a ridiculous reveal at the end in which they have a dinner party with all the suspects and Nick prods them until he figures out who the killer is.
It features Nick and Nora Charles, a gay, (in the old-fashioned sense) social couple who are well liked and obviously lots of fun. They, with their pet dog Asta, are spending the holidays in New York City so that they don't have to spend them with Nora's relatives. Nick was once a detective, but he gave that up when his (15 years younger) wife inherited a great deal of money. They spend the novel (I don't know if this is their normal behavior) getting drunk, staying up all night, and sleeping until noon.
The novel came out in 1933, the year Prohibition ended. I am guessing that this was written, and is set, during Prohibition, particularly since there are several mentions of speakeasies. Nevertheless, everyone in the book drinks like a fish.
They get involved with the mystery when Nick encounters Dorothy Wynant, a young woman of 19 or 20, in a speakeasy. She remembers him from some work he did for her father eight years previously, when he was still working as a detective. Her parents later divorced and she has been living with her mother in Europe, but now that she's back in New York she'd like to track down her father. Nick helps her track down her father's lawyer, and after that the mystery seems to chase after Nick and try to force him to get involved.
Dorothy Wynant has developed a crush on Nick, and keeps appearing at their hotel for sympathy and to plead that she's afraid of her mother. Her mother, who Nick knows, and dislikes, from his earlier business with Clyde Wynant, finds her ex-husband's secretary, murdered. Dorothy's younger brother, Gilbert, is very intelligent and has a particular interest in crime, and so he wants to corner Nick and ask him all sorts of questions about detective work. Plus Wynant's attorney, Macauley, is an old acquaintance of Nick's, and keeps contacting him to report on events, plus share what little information he has about his client, who is missing. Wynant himself sends Nick a letter asking him to look into the death of his secretary, and Nick and Nora are awakened in the middle of the night when a suspect in the woman's murder breaks in to try to convince Nick that he didn't kill her.
So, though Nick actually keeps insisting that he isn't interested in getting involved, nevertheless he ends up involved.
Together Nick and Nora seem to quite enjoy themselves as they work on the crime together. They're a fun couple, and fun companions for the reader. It is not surprising, then, that this novel was made into a movie in 1934, which led to it becoming a popular franchise as Nick and Nora and their little dog travel about, attend a lot of parties, and solve crimes, seemingly always to help out a pretty young woman who cries too easily. I've seen several of the films, but not recently. I was curious to watch the film again last night to see how the novel compared with the original film, but of course it wasn't available on Netflix streaming (that seems to be the story of Netflix streaming--it sounds like such a handy and wonderful idea, but whatever you want to watch is never available).
There are a few things that strain credibility, of course. For one thing, everyone loves the Charleses. They are the life of the party, and can do no wrong. The police like them, especially Nora. Criminals like them, even the ones Nick helped put in prison. And, for their part, they like most everyone, except Dorothy's mother. Nick takes Nora to a speakeasy owned by a former criminal so that they can chat with the man who forced his way into their bedroom in the middle of the night and tried to kill Nick, and Nora has a wonderful time, proclaiming afterward that the criminal classes are just marvelous, she couldn't even understand half the things they were talking about!
The Thin Man, the novel, is more complex than the film, which isn't surprising. There are multiple murders, and layers of lies to work through before the reveal at the end. Nevertheless, even if I hadn't already known who the killer was, I might have been able to guess it anyway--the clues are there. None of the characters in this novel are even slightly like real people, but they are interesting, and that is better than being realistic. Overall, I found this novel is quite a satisfying meal.
Edited to add: I have now watched the film again, and it resembles the book less than I had remembered. It is considerably simplified and they took the darkness out of many of the characters. In the book, Dorothy is a hard-drinking brat who is involved with a married man, and her mother an abusive would-be blackmailer who constantly lies. In the film, Dorothy and her father have a warm relationship and she is about to be married to a nice young man. In the films, Nick and Nora *always* seem to be helping a pretty young woman who wants to get married. The film also has a ridiculous reveal at the end in which they have a dinner party with all the suspects and Nick prods them until he figures out who the killer is.
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