Notice the reversal of the authors' names in comparison to the first book: Sayers's sole contribution to this volume, which earns her the byline, is a collection of wartime letters written to and by her characters. I found them rather off-putting and was unsurprised to read that they were, in effect, war-effort propaganda published in 1939 and 1940, in some of the darkest moments of World War II for Great Britain.
Paton Walsh's mystery story centers around the effects of the war on the homefront in Paggleham, where Lady Peter is living with her children and nephew and nieces in the country while Lord Peter and Bunter are spying on the Continent. The village is having a practice air raid, for which they prove remarkably ill-prepared. The complaining of the village folk, whom Paton Walsh clearly wants to denigrate as selfish and provincial, stands in stark contrast to the flood in The Nine Tailors, where Sayers depicts the capable and self-effacing populace rising to the occasion with aplomb under more dangerous circumstances and with less advance notice. During the practice air raid, a young woman is killed on the streets, a murder which Harriet is obliged to investigate on her own unless and until her husband returns.
I suppose it's not spoileriffic, considering Paton Walsh has already written two more "New Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane Mysteries," to reveal that he does, in fact, finally return, but I don't really need to know how many times he pleasures his wife before taking his boots off. Paton Walsh includes a lot more sex (and gore) in her books than Sayers, which is unsurprising considering the age but still disappointing in light of the fact that these are meant to be a continuation of the same novel line and not a new series set in the same time period but with modern literary sensibilities.
What really annoyed me was this thought Paton Walsh placed in Harriet's head on page 331: "And there was a conundrum here: who had he killed?" I hope that both Sayers and Harriet Vane, as writers, would know that the question should be 'whom had he killed!'
As stated above, there are two more books in the series at this point, both of which are attributed solely to Jill Paton Walsh. I began reading The Attenbury Emeralds and did not finish. The list of books I began reading and didn't finish is a short one, short enough that those books I set down in disgust, unable to finish or unwilling to subject myself to the misery of continued reading remain ready to hand in my mind, for the most part. The Ambassadors by Henry James: just too mind-numbingly boring. The Walrus and the Warwolf by Hugh Cook: I despised every character in it and couldn't stand to spend any more time with them. The Pickwick Papers: God forgive me, I enjoy almost everything Charles Dickens ever wrote in spite of myself, even the blatant heart-tugging sob stories, and the March girls loved it so, but Pickwick and his friends are the Dumb and Dumber of their age. Well, add to that short list The Attenbury Emeralds.
Where to begin with the sins of The Attenbury Emeralds? Well, start with the fact that it opens with a list of characters, a crutch Dorothy Sayers never felt the need for as she respected the intelligence of her readers. Go on to the fact that first several chapters are nothing but Peter, Harriet, and Bunter sitting in a room talking at each other, just clever dialogue atop too-clever dialogue. And the reason for this logorrhea? Because in all their years of courtship and marriage, Peter apparently never told Harriet about his first case, the one that got him started detecting. Likely, no?
Add the unbearably anachronistic classism (reverse classism?) where all the aristocracy are unbearable snobs who have nothing but contempt for the lower classes except for Peter, noble, shell-shocked Peter, who prefers the company of servants to that of his own social milieu because they're so salt of the earth. And the absolute nadir is Paton Walsh dropping The Honorable Freddy's "The Honorable" and actually allowing a character to refer to Lord Peter as Lord Wimsey, with no one raising an eyebrow or correcting his appalling faux pas.
We get it, sweetie: You're democratic, progressive, anti-establishment, probably socialist. Go fight the system in your own darn books instead of using Dorothy Sayers's name and reputation to ride your hobby-horse.
No comments:
Post a Comment