Book review: Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers

The thirteenth book I read in 2015 is Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Another in the Lord Peter Wimsey series, this mystery has the added hilarity of skewering the advertising industry with a sense of cynicism and verisimilitude that can only come from close personal experience: Sayers was a copywriter for an ad agency for a decade.  On the competition among cigarette manufacturers:

"If Whifflets announce that they don't damage the lungs, Puffins claim that they strengthen the pulmonary system and Gasperettes quote doctors who recommend them in cases of tuberculosis."

As one character remarks, "We spend our whole time asking intimate questions of perfect strangers, and it naturally blunts our finer feelings.  'Mother!  has your Child Learnt Regular Habits?' 'Are you Troubled with Fullness after Eating?' 'Are you Satisfied about  your Drains?' 'Are you Sure that your Toilet-Paper is Germ-free?' 'Your most Intimate Friends dare not Ask you this Question.' 'Do you Suffer from Superfluous Hair?' 'Do you Like them to Look at your Hands?' 'Do you ever ask yourself about Body-Odour?' 'If anything Happened to You, would your Loved Ones be Safe?' 'Why Spend so much Time in the Kitchen?' 'You think that Carpet is clean -- but is it?' 'Are you a Martyr to Dandruff?' Upon my soul, I sometimes wonder why the long-suffering public doesn't rise and slay us."

There is little Bunter in this novel, as in The Five Red Herrings, which is a shame, though Chief-Inspector Parker and his family feature more prominently.  Lord Peter goes undercover in an ad agency, doing a splendid Bertie Wooster impression, to discover which of its employees has a scandalous secret before it can go public and sink the firm, and simultaneously masquerades as his own identical black-sheep cousin.  Sayers slightly overdoes Lord Peter's ubercompetence at everything, but it's an enjoyable read.

The ending, however ... well ... it's....  Okay, spoiler alert: I'm not going to tell you whodunnit or how or why, but I have to say one thing about the aftermath of his unmasking.

|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|

Okay, this is the second Lord Peter mystery that ends with our hero encouraging the erring but proper villain to do the honorable thing and commit suicide as the best possible solution for his family.  In the other, Lord Peter and his friends actually provide the firearm and privacy and wait for the sound of the gunshot; in this one, suicide is technically averted by Lord Peter's serendipitous suggestion that the murderer simply allow his former compatriots to kill him for being discovered.  There are many admirable things about the cricket, stiff-upper-lip society of 1930s Britain, but this particular facet is morally appalling.

Book review: Yes Sister, No Sister by Jennifer Craig

Having completed the Call the Midwife trilogy last year, I was offered this as a recommendation on Amazon.  Yes Sister, No Sister: My Life as a Trainee Nurse in 1950s Yorkshire by Jennifer Craig is the twelfth book I read this year.

Television executives have been aware of one truth since the early days of the medium: Hospital shows make for great drama.  However, I have to say there is a reason that Call the Midwife is a successful series, and Yes Sister, No Sister, despite being about the same subject and set in the same time period, hasn't (yet) been optioned.  Jennifer Worth's books display a compassion in interest in the people around her, both nuns and patients, while Jennifer Craig's writing reveals that she is really only interested in nursing as a source of personal achievement.  Jennifer Worth learns from both her patients and her teachers, while Jennifer Craig displays nothing but resentment toward her superiors and very little interest in her patients, save one who gushes about what a wonderful nurse she (Craig) is.  At one point, Craig asks about a patient, a young girl injured in an IRA bombing, and is told that she survived surgery and that Craig can go visit her, if she likes -- and then she utterly fails to follow up on it, instead focusing on the camaraderie among the ER staff instead of the suffering of the victims.  In a few instances, she hints at hidden depths in a few of her nemeses but neglects to uncover it.

In searching for an image of the cover to link, I found a review of the book on another blog which states that "Craig is clearly the hero of her own story."  I think this is where this memoir suffers in comparison to Worth's: Jennifer Worth focused on giving a voice to those around her, whether nuns or patients, and comes off as kinder and more human.  Craig, on the other hand, glories in being singled out as the only one invited to the wedding of a fellow nurse who comes off as a most insufferable snob.  Worth grows and changes as she questions her own preconceptions; Craig doesn't seem to have questioned how right she is since 1954.  While the stories she tells are interesting, I'd much rather have Jenny Lee at my bedside if I were ill.

Book review: Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield

The eleventh novel I read in 2015 is Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield.  This was a serendipitous find, as I was walking back to the children's section in Half-Price Books and passed an endcap display featuring several remaindered copies of this novel.  I read Setterfield's first book, The Thirteenth Tale, several years ago -- someone gave it to me, either Leslie or Jennifer, I believe -- and recognized her name on the dust jacket.

As I was searching for an image to paste into the post, I noticed that the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads tended toward either love-it or hate-it, and those who were big fans of The Thirteenth Tale tended not to like Bellman & Black.  I don't think that the ending of either book really pays off, honestly, but I really enjoyed the first half of the book.  The protagonist, William Bellman, and his friends and family members are all truly likeable characters, in the first half of the book, at least, which makes their lives and ultimate fates interesting and affecting, even if the parts they play in the ongoing plot are small ones.

The first half of the book traces the rise of William Bellman from boyhood to manhood through what seems to be a charmed life to early, if not unearned, success in whatever he puts his mind to.  Those closest to him seem to be fated to die young and senselessly, however, culminating in a truly emotionally brutal scarlet fever epidemic that strikes his home town.  The aftermath of the tragedy is the turning point, both of Bellman's life and of the book, and both go downhill from that point, unfortunately.  From being surrounded by a likeable cast, William Bellman becomes a veritable hermit, and the book suffers as a result of his obsession with a mysterious figure whose significance remains unclear, even in the denouement.  There is one moment in the second half where Bellman makes something like a human connection to another character and the reader begins to feel for him again, but it leads nowhere.

Some other reviewers objected to the technical and historical details of the Victorian funeral, which dominate the second half of the book, but frankly, they at least give the author something to communicate in the last 150 pages; and I found them interesting, regardless.  I completed the book still unsure about the import of what is presented as a fateful event in the first chapter: Was Bellman's fate actually affected by it?  Or was it merely a sustained red herring?  I finished the book unsatisfied, but I'd happily read the first half of it over again.

Book review: The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers

The tenth book I read in 2015 is The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers.  I first read the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries last year, beginning with the Harriet Vane installments and then returning to the beginning to fill in around her.  This is the sixth of the Wimsey novels, with a handful of short stories scattered along the timeline.

If you're not going to compare Sidney Chambers to Father Brown, the other obvious comparison is to Lord Peter, whose personal and working relationship to Charles Parker is echoed in Sidney's friendship with Geordie Keating.  Sadly, here as well Sidney suffers by the comparison, in that the characters are so much flatter and less vibrant than Sayers's creations.  Sidney and Inspector Keating are friends because ... Sidney preached the funeral for Keating's predecessor in his post and they both like drinking and backgammon?  Well, really, because every amateur detective needs a professional counterpart to step in and apply the cuffs after the summation.

There's very little Parker in this installment, however, as Lord Peter is on vacation in Scotland when someone drops dead of less than natural causes.  He does handle things when a suspect turns up in London, but for the most part, Lord Peter is dealing with local authorities.  The dialect is a little difficult -- after reading it in context repeatedly, I still have no idea what "Ay, imph'm" is supposed to signify -- but not impenetrable.  The 'red herrings' of the title are five of the six suspects who all had motive, means, and opportunity to kill a most unpopular local resident.

Book review: The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith

The ninth book I read in 2015 is the eighth book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith.  Both Grace Makutsi and Charlie the apprentice flirt with greener pastures, but neither, thankfully, ultimately quit the environs of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, though Charlie's inevitable return involves more humble pie than Mma Makutsi's.

The main mystery (or one of them, because there's always more than one ongoing case) is copied straight from Snopes.com, even to the day of the week it occurs on, although the setting is switched from Capetown to Botswana.  The urban legend dates back at least to 1996 and was used in an episode of the Frost detective television series in Smith's native UK in 2001, which is more than a little lazy.  But one doesn't read the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series for its airtight plots, and the outcome of Mma Makutsi's separate investigation is charmingly unconventional.

Not lovin' it

So this is McDonald's' Super Bowl commercial:



 




Faith watched this ad unfold with a look of growing horror on her face.  When it was over, she turned to me and said, "Let's not go to McDonald's until that's over."  She can't imagine anything more embarrassing than being part of a public display of affection with her family when all she wants is a chicken sandwich.



Probably not the reaction McDonald's was going for.  ;)