Some thoughts about P.D. James [reading]
Dec. 29th, 2010 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marydellI dislike most of P.D. James' characters--some mildly, some passionately. And the disability fail in The Black Tower is so bad* I don't know if it can even be called a fail, since to fail at something sort of implies that you tried in the first place. At the same time, even her most loathesome and/or pathetic characters have agency, and she spends time developing them as people (loathesome people) instead of leaving them as archetypes. And the reason I keep returning to her is that--with the exception of the atrocious Innocent Blood and maybe some I haven't read yet--she crafts really terrific mystery plots. They're full of interesting clues that keep me guessing but generally don't actually let me figure out who did it. This may be because, when every character is basically a sociopath, it's impossible to say that any of them isn't a murderer. But she also seems to have a particular knack for showing important structural bones of the plot as clues, without showing any of the connections to the other structural bones.
I still find Dalgliesh to be an insufferable wet blanket, and his puppy-eyed staff followers to be whiny little suck-ups. And I'm still pissed that her not-a-mystery The Children of Men never bothered to explain the cause behind its central event (all the men become infertile for no reason) or the cause behind its resolution, which is cheating when judged as SF, but doubly cheating when considering that she's a mystery writer by trade. And I'm tired of reading about people who don't love their children, parents, spouses, or friends. But right now I'm 4/5 of the way through Original Sin, and wow! It's an absolutely crackerjack whodunnit, and I'm annoyed that I can't simply sit and read it at work, because it's got me completely hooked.
Still, I may have to re-read a Ngaio Marsh, in which people fall in love and end happily despite that beastly murder business, or a Sayers, in which everyone is charming, including the murderer, before I go on to another James.
*it's set in a private facility for disabled and chronically ill people, and many words are spent on how disgusting disability and illness are.
I still find Dalgliesh to be an insufferable wet blanket, and his puppy-eyed staff followers to be whiny little suck-ups. And I'm still pissed that her not-a-mystery The Children of Men never bothered to explain the cause behind its central event (all the men become infertile for no reason) or the cause behind its resolution, which is cheating when judged as SF, but doubly cheating when considering that she's a mystery writer by trade. And I'm tired of reading about people who don't love their children, parents, spouses, or friends. But right now I'm 4/5 of the way through Original Sin, and wow! It's an absolutely crackerjack whodunnit, and I'm annoyed that I can't simply sit and read it at work, because it's got me completely hooked.
Still, I may have to re-read a Ngaio Marsh, in which people fall in love and end happily despite that beastly murder business, or a Sayers, in which everyone is charming, including the murderer, before I go on to another James.
*it's set in a private facility for disabled and chronically ill people, and many words are spent on how disgusting disability and illness are.
