Capsule Reactions: January 2025

Sometimes there just isn’t much to write about a book, but I have a few thoughts I’d like to get out of the noggin.

The Silk Stocking Murders (1928), Anthony Berkeley
I said I was probably going to revisit the works of Anthony Berkeley Cox in 2026, and I did. And, uh, well. It wasn’t an improvement on The Wychford Mystery. The Silk Stocking Murders is one of the most odiously antisemitic mysteries that I’ve ever read from the Golden Age of Detection (GAD), which is really saying something because many books of this era are antisemitic. It is also pervasively sexist. Because I am interested in the development of the serial killer thriller subgenre, I toyed around with whether I wanted to write a full post about it… but in order to get there, I’d need to either write through or set aside the absolutely rancid bigotry of the book. It’s too prominent to pass by quickly, and what is there to even say that hasn’t already been said? Many old books have various bigotries, but they’ll usually have other things of value. This is not one of those books. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, and the highest value it has is serving as an example of a historical work that does not manage to transcend the bigotries of its time or its author. Despite having two terrible experiences reading Cox’s work, I will still probably read his more famous books eventually. But at this point, those will be out of historical curiosity about the genre and not for pleasure. 

The Tainted Cup (2024), Robert Jackson Bennett
This book was enjoyable! But, despite being sold to me as a fantasy/mystery genre mashup, the mystery side of things was pretty slim. I would categorize it more as a political thriller than a mystery, and the fantasy side definitely comes first:  it’s set in a world like Pacific Rim, beset by kaiju, with a creepy and cool biohacking sort of magic. It doesn’t really fit here because it would be difficult to write about coherently without explaining all the lore and magic etc. But I am giving it a shout out for having fun with some mystery tropes. One thing that is borrowed from the mystery genre is the Sherlock/Watson dynamic between the detective and the sidekick. This trope is always, always fun when it is done well, and I enjoyed it here. The narrator, the Watson character, is biomagically altered to have perfect recall, but that doesn’t give him understanding. It’s a fun way to justify first person narration where clues are noticed and recorded for the reader, but not understood. I liked the book a lot and already bought the sequel. 

Last Call at the Nightingale (2022), Katharine Schellman
This isn’t the first contemporary mystery novel set in the 1920s that I’ve read, and I’m sure that it won’t be the last. It’s a historical setting that I try again and again, searching for something that will really capture me, yet nothing really has. This one was enjoyable enough and I don’t have a lot to say about it. However, it did give me an epiphany:  the reason I keep choosing contemporary mysteries in the ‘20s is because of my love for the Golden Age of Detection. It’s so obvious, I don’t know why I didn’t realize it consciously! It also explains why I tend to be vague dissatisfied with these books:  they aren’t anything like GADs, they’re not intended to be. I wonder if I’ll enjoy them more if I adjust my expectations? Or maybe I should admit that, while I like historical mysteries, this era may be too overshadowed by the Golden Age to satisfy me? 

The Darkness (2015?, 2018 english), Ragnar Jonasson 
This was the first in a series of recent Icelandic crime novels. I'm not the biggest fan of Nordic Noir but I do partake every once in a while. This book has both the strengths and weaknesses of the Nordic Noir. It was a strange and dark book, very atmospheric, and I have no idea how it’s going to be a series. The main character, Hulda, is a detective on the eve of retirement, and though she’s stated repeatedly to have been a very good detective, it isn’t shown throughout the book. She makes a series of devastating mistakes that were frustrating to read, but she is an interesting character: I like a difficult middle aged woman detective. The audiobook was good: briskly narrated, and I liked the concise style. I’m not sure about the ending, but I will probably read at least book two out of sheer curiosity.