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POST NAMER TBC-- work harder, meme!

Welcome back, anyway! Chat fandom, media, creative things, weirdness from around the net, funny stuff, anything! Meme awaits!

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From: (Anonymous)

Joke that went over my head, last time: a QC called Maugham, who's quick to throw tantrums and who is described as having a "smoothly porcine" face.

From: (Anonymous)

I saw something recently that was like "you wouldn't put the name of a foe in your book! That's giving them far too important a place!", and I remember thinking "If I wrote a book, I would absolutely put the names of every last prat who's ever annoyed me in it". So am amused to see Rowling seems to be closer to my side of that fence. :p

From: (Anonymous)

Also, I really should've known that Raphael was the killer the minute he tried to use his having killed a woman by accident as a chat-up line.

From: (Anonymous)

Still on Lethal White. I forgot how much of this one was puns. Aside from the murder centering on one big pun, Rowling's apparently on a mission to put a horse on every page. Pg 553:

"So, still no real leads?"

"Hold your horses."

+_+

She describes a hard left party (yet another pun) and it's so horrendous I'm still cringing. A young woman fucks the grey-haired mao-hatted old guy in a grim toilet. A man called Digby lectures the women on how feminism can only ever be a byproduct of marxism, while trying to look up their skirts. Another man hears a woman's father has died, and tries to use it to chat her up, sticking a thin veneer of politics on it so he can claim they have a bond (some 20ish years between them, too). The house is bedecked in nearly all the worst flags. Finished the chapters a while ago and I can still smell the BO. +_+

From: (Anonymous)

Finished. I had vaguely remembered that Chiswell was involved in exporting something immoral, but not the details or what. I found that part of the plot really odd, even though it's based on a real news story from 2006, because I'd've thought it made no economic sense for anybody. Manufacturing gallows in the UK and exporting them to much poorer countries? How is that profitable? Or affordable? Wouldn't they source them pretty much anywhere else? It's not like it's some new tech needing new, specific manufacturing techniques, which is the kind of thing where a poorer country might be forced to buy from a richer country; you'd think there'd be lots of (much!) cheaper competition. Found it odd on a first read, still find it odd now.

This one was better as a detective novel than Career of Evil, though; very convoluted and red herringy, but fair! You can reconstruct events and guess whodunnit/howdunnit/whydunnit based on the crime scene and other info you've been told, rather than requiring 1 tiny detail that isn't even in the book.

I mostly like this one for the relationship drama and PTSD stuff, though. And for the moral ambiguity of Chiswell himself, as you find out more about him with each chapter. Also, trying to fight off your bastard-son painting-thief murderer with your deceased golden-son's wall-mounted fencing sword is the most comically stereotypical old school MP behaviour, it made me laugh. This is indeed how all people entrusted with British government are supposed to operate. If you have never reached for a rapier on the wall to fight off an intruder, can you even call yourself an MP?

From: (Anonymous)

And I think having a relative who tries to kill you is a universal requirement for being a member of some aristocracy.

From: (Anonymous)

I want to go straight onto Troubled Blood (again!) for more Relationship Drama, but I need to travel soon and it's not the *easiest* book to carry around. Hate e-readers. So may be delayed. :( Hoping it'll function like Game of Thrones and there'll be a random copy that has sprung up at my destination. Pretty sure Game of Thrones just spawns fresh copies if you leave a bookshelf alone for a few days.

From: (Anonymous)

how long do i need to leave a game of thrones out for the winds of winter to spawn :(

From: (Anonymous)

Back to Troubled Blood. I'm about halfway through.

I think I said this last time, but damn, Strike's so overharsh to Irene. It's like

Dave: *eyewatering misogyny; implies he's basically a rapist*

Strike: Good old Dave, what a chum

Irene: *prejudice and a rude manner*

Strike: THIS IS THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

I keep thinking "lay off my girl irene", which is probably overkill, but between the obnoxious comments and interrupting people mid-sentence, she gives mountains of useful information! At halfway through the book, they'd be in a position to close the case, if they *listened* to her! And she basically says that, like 'look I'm rude and unkind but you just want the truth, right?'. Yes, Irene, I do!

But Strike cuts her off again and again, writing her off as an irrelevant gossip. Boo.

Meanwhile, I had remembered Dave was a twat, but I had either forgotten or not appreciated what an absolutely monumental twat of twatacular proportions he was. I'm sad he didn't get eaten by that shark. His poor wife. I *had* remembered what a twat Saul was, but it's still hard to read the descriptions of him ooooozing slime, the woman-hate pulsing under the surface. Can't wait for him to get punched in the face.

I had also either forgotten, or never realised, that Shanker is still going out with Alyssa! In this book, he's getting Christmas presents for her kid. :D How long is that, 3 years?

I notice my theory that possibly Lucy killed Leda isn't being *contradicted*, where she takes pains to say that she never considered Leda to be her mother, with a rather sinister sentence that goes something like "not since I was 14. Younger, actually." and she hilights that Strike's relationship with Leda was different to hers. The book also reveals that Leda abandoned Lucy as a newborn, leaving her with her (Leda's) parents. Children who receive little maternal affection tend not to fare too well when it comes to not-turning-evil, in Rowling's work. The method is still a stretch, though. One thing I'm vaguely considering: in the last book, it was revealed that Leda had had another child, with Whittaker, shortly before she died. I'm wondering if Lucy *did* kill her, it was partly to protect that kid from growing up with Leda. And I'm wondering if the stuff about social identity theory is partly a hint that we shouldn't group people together toooo far just because they're siblings.

But as Shanker appears in each book (albeit not by name in the first), I think he's also still on the map. This book also hilights women bringing murderers into their homes without realising it. I think he's either in these books so consistently to be a murderer, or to get murdered, down the line. I still lean toward the latter, but statistically, he's more likely to have killed Leda than Lucy is. And Strike's established to have a blindspot when it comes to his friends being terrible. But he's also established to have a blindspot about how bad things can be for women and girls, which leads back to Lucy...

Whatever happens, I just know I'll be very offended if it turns out to be some random.

The dialogue in this one is creakier than the others, sometimes sounding very stilted and contrived, and the book sometimes gets lecturey. Rowling also has an odd habit of calling Asian characters "brown" (and having others call them "brown"), which is weird because that's an American thing afaik. Might be more popular today, with American influence, but not in 2013ish when the book is set. Maybe they changed it to accommodate a US audience, since over there, Asian means East Asian. In the UK, it means from Pakistan, India and thereabouts. Probably frowned at this last time.

And again, I remember all the people who claimed the TRAs were crazy about imaginary slights in the book, "there's just a killer that wears a woman's coat to disguise himself in one scene, that's all!". Erm he did also steal women's underwear, wear it and wank into it. I've no quarrel with the depiction, but I think it's fair to say they were in this picture and they didn't like it.

I also just don't buy how dense Strike is about Schmidt; wouldn't he google "schmidt astrology"? And wouldn't Robin? So why isn't that possibility given in his set of deciphering notes? I guess we're going to have to chalk it up to Strike's flu, because it's really weird to assume Schmidt is a figment of Talbot's imagination, rather than some real astrologer-pseudo-intellectual, especially given same pages keep referencing Crowley. I've put this in spoilertext but I don't think it's really a spoiler, because that's the first thing you'd think. *shrug*

Anyway, still enjoying it. Series still making me hungry, though Rowling was good enough to put food-poisoning in this one, to counterbalance. Also, it's heavy, so I'm pacing while reading to get my steps AND get some muscle in my arms. What a useful book!

From: (Anonymous)

I never noticed any food in the books. Perhaps I filter out those descriptions the way I do landscapes.

I'm enjoying reading your thoughts but I have nothing else to contribute here!

From: (Anonymous)

:D I must be a hungry hungry caterpillar because I swear they have had approximately 9000 meals since I last posted! Including some kind of red wine beef stew, steak and chips, roast lamb, and multiple breakfast muffins... and Strike has a habit of eating all the biscuits. I'm trying to eat healthily as a January thing, which oddly is helping me to resist the pull, because the books are listing things I can't eat for the moment anyway. The hypnotic crunchy pull of these books toward ALL OF FOOD is harder to fight when there are no rules between you and the biscuits...

Anyway! On this reread, I'm noticing just what an asset Barclay is to the team. On page 706, he agrees to pretend to be an adult baby for the sake of a case. Now that's professionalism.

From: (Anonymous)

(So I suppose I ought to be willing to overlook him being there as Rowling's mouthpiece on the topic of Scottish independence. Stuck out just as much on this read as on the last one. I enjoy the character when he's not playing mouthpiece... which is often true of the characters in this. On the one hand, I'd've preferred more showing and less telling on various politics. Otoh, this book would be 3 times the weight, and I'm already using it for gentle weight-training.)

From: (Anonymous)

Though, something odd, where I'm not sure whether it's a plot-hole, something I'm not grasping, or setting the scene for a plot in a future book: Barclay comes into the office in the evening, to 'deliver the good news in person' about a case. But why would he? He goes to the dark office and turns the light on. He might think Strike is upstairs, in his flat-- but then why go into the office? He'd just go up the stairs and knock on the door (which would also be a weird af thing to do, but would be consistent). Instead, Barclay goes into what he must believe is an empty office, to... deliver some information to Strike? What? This is after a few phonecalls to Strike that Strike doesn't answer. And wouldn't Barclay be able to see that the lights are off in the office, from the street outside?

So, to me, this is consistent with Barclay thinking Strike is out and busy and going into the office for reasons of his own, then quickly covering it up. Especially since it's used to interrupt a scene that the reader would be paying attention to (potential romance stuff). Would be a good place to put a plot-important detail.

But otoh, could be massively overthinking it. Maybe Barclay just expects Strike to be working late. Maybe the office windows don't face out onto the street; I don't remember. Plus the 'main' story of each of these books sometimes isn't told in a way I'd consider 'fair', with all the clues on the page before the characters work them out; sometimes Rowling narrates a scene, without including the clue, then 600 pages later, a character will remember the scene, with a new detail that contains the clue, and then work it out from that. Often feels 'cheaty'. So I'm not sure any overarching plot will have clues placed carefully, like this. I enjoy the books more for the vibes than the puzzling. But it'll be interesting to see if this goes anywhere. If I were picking a character to be treacherous, Barclay would be a good one.

Nearly at the end of this book, anyway. After this, they're ones I haven't read!