[gmw]

I expect there will be two conversations going on: one about the book, and another about the mystery discussed in the book. To stick with the book for now, here's what I prepared when I finished reading it...

I think it was an interesting idea for a book published in 1951, and was reasonably well handled considering the constraints (book length, audience expectation and so on). As such the book earns about a 3/5 from me: worth reading but unlikely to ever revisit. I do have trouble working out how it came to get voted into all-time best lists ... but then the book faces a big hurdle with me: I detest Inspector Alan Grant.


Please excuse what follows, especially the length, I need to get this off my chest and then maybe I can talk about the book more calmly. (Some parts in spoilers to make it look shorter. )

Dear Alan Grant, how do I loath thee? Let me count the ways. Here is a small selection of quotes that, to my mind, mark him as a smug, self-satisfied and arrogant son of a ... Scotsman:

Spoiler:

Grant called her The Midget to compensate himself for being bossed around by a piece of Dresden china which he could pick up in one hand. [So calling her The Miget wasn't bad enough, now we're adding Dresden china to make up for it?]

When she was off duty he was attended to by The Amazon, a goddess with arms like the limb of a beech tree. [Just what is it with this guy?]

“You can tell what the normal run of over-sexed women look like by a walk down Bond Street any day between five and six, and yet the most notorious nymphomaniac in London looks like a cold saint.” [Okay, so this was early 1950s, we should not expect too much, but on top of everything else?]

And he had gone away, rosy and sane and balanced, as befitted a man who was belted for his good in his youth. [Ditto the previous comment, I guess.]

A man who understands about people hasn’t any yen to write history. History is toy soldiers.” [I really wish I had the impression this was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek.]

Grant's name calling isn't humorous, it's derogatory. He's always looking down his nose at everyone else (although perhaps not Marta). At best he's condescending, but much of the time I think he's worse than that.

Plus there is his major offence: “I see that you have managed to read at least one of the books I brought you—if the rumpled jacket is any criterion.” A rumpled book jacket! No trial is needed, put him up against the wall. Now. We won't bother waiting for dawn.


And to top it all off, he's just not that smart.

Spoiler:

In the first Inspector Alan Grant book he sees a stiletto and this supposedly experienced inspector thinks "must have been a Dago". And then it went downhill from there.

In this book we have this supposedly experienced policeman jumping to all sorts of conclusions without checking his facts first. (eg: Assuming Thomas More was contemporary to Richard amongst other things. Come to think of it, constantly referring to the hair-shirt wearing, self-flagellating Thomas More as "the sainted" was pretty annoying too.)

And telling us how smart he is to insist on contemporary accounts - while he's staring at, and making judgements from, a painting that was made a century after Richard was dead. (It is - and he knows it is - a late 16th century painting of an early 16th century painting; so that's two artists that weren't looking at Richard's face when they painted it, not sure exactly where we go to find the artist that actually looked upon Richard and put paint to canvas.)

And what's this crap about telling what people will and will not do from their faces. Sounds like phrenology by another name, and not the sort of stuff I expect to hear from a real detective.

It is possible to have dislikeable detectives and still have it work. I never particularly liked Christie's Poirot, but she sensibly makes him a figure of some ridicule so that the audience has reason to feel superior while still admiring his "little grey cells". Tey's Grant is all arrogance and self-satisfaction while also being outright wrong about so many things as to seem just silly, but this is never acknowledged by the characters or the author; they don't seem to see it.

I might have had more patience, but the first book (The Man in the Queue) was a did-not-finish for me a few months ago, and for all the same sorts of offences.