Are there crime-fiction books so good you hold on to them and re-read them? Name a few classics and inspirations.
I'm splitting this into two questions. 1. Do I hold onto crime-fiction books? Ahem.
2. Do I re-read them?
Not many. I consult them a fair bit, looking for something I'm sure I remember seeing there, when I'm truffling around for examples (good or bad) to illustrate a workshop or article. And I visit lots of them briefly, reacqainting myself with the names of characters or the length of chapters. Of course, I could do that with the click of a button, but see that big, open book on the stand in the picture? That's my dictionary, over to which I scoot on my typing chair when I need to check a word. (On the shelves underneath are a Scots dictionary, a thesaurus, an etymological dictonary, and a nifty little book of 20th-century words, dead handy for weeding out anachronisms.)
I do re-read by listening on Audible a fair bit. Right now, I'm refreshing my memory of Stephen King's Mr Mercedes novels in advance of reading HOLLY (which I'm going to try to save for the Christmas holidays). And I listened to WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN, just before I read WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN NOW. But as a sighted person, I listen to books in a different way from how I read print: while cooking, cleaning, driving, falling asleep or gardening. Never while sitting in a chair and never while paying the attention owed to a first read.
Speaking of Christmas and Mary Higgins Clark, I do re-read the Willy and Alvirah stories regularly, by fairylight, breathing in the scent of spruce. They remind me of the Christmas I spent in Manhattan and always feel like a visit to old friends.
That's pretty much the case for all of my crime re-reading. It's comfort all the way.
My top three re-reads are:
SLEEPING MURDER, by Agatha Christie (just edging out THE MOVING FINGER as my favourite). I love a house in a book and the house in this novel is front and centre as well as the plot being one of Christie's cleverest.
A SURFEIT OF LAMPREYS, by Ngaio Marsh. It's got another great house - complete with floorplan - and a family of eccentrics who're right on the line between endearing and insufferable. Marsh seeming to know that helps though. There's also a hefty dose of real creeping horror in here. Brrrrr.
THE TIGER IN THE SMOKE, by Margery Allingham. My favourite crime novel. It's not as oblique and tricky to follow as Marsh's books sometimes are (looking at you, THE BECKONING LADY and THE CHINA GOVERNESS), and she never revels in the gothic more than she does here. Also - as I've said before - the climactic scene is the best treatment of the difference between goodness and evil I've ever read, including "Paradise Lost", and I'm not even kidding.
Cx
CATRIONA:: I also don't re-reads many of the classic mysteries, but agree with your choices of Surfeit of Lampreys & Tiger in the Smoke. BTW, my Penguin paperback version looks almost identical to yours.
ReplyDeleteI reread a lot. While you were gallivanting around the past two months, I reread much of Ruth Rendall. In the past year I’ve found I can’t remember s**t about many plots anyway, and I have an extensive library on my Kindle. So at ten pm, all tucked up, I can pick and choose without ever leaving my bed.
ReplyDeleteI’ve also reread most of your standalones, and I have the feathers to prove it.
But then I found I’d overpaid my Visa by a thousand bucks, and did I ever go shopping!
Xo
I've got a lot more I return to - most way too creepy for your taste. I reread Chandler for the fabulous descriptions - "He was as inconspicuous as a trantula on a piece of angel food cake." The BBC did an exquisite version of 5 Little Pigs, but they couldn't come close to the portrait that Poirot describes in the book. You've inspired me to have a look at Tiger in the Smoke.
ReplyDeleteMe again! Because I reread the Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane novels at least every 5 years. I so wish they'd do a new series! How about Tom Hiddleston?
ReplyDeleteI've listened to Highfire by Eoin Colfer twice and am gearing up for a third. Funny.
ReplyDelete