TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION - P.D.JAMES

 

Spookily enough I got this book out of the library about an hour before I heard she had died. If this is your genre it's a great read. She concentrates mainly on the Golden Age where writers such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh were hitting their stride. She talks about Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson as well as the need for a Watson type character as narrator to move stories along and shoot the breeze about clues. She hardly mentions her own work although she would have been justified.

Read it to: help organise your thoughts.

THE GOLDFINCH

 

The book opens with a fair number of quotes from famous authors and reviewers that add veracity to the notion that this is a great novel. I can see it being set as required reading for classes from now until eternity as the need to dissect, analyse and expound upon sets in. I've been Tartt fan since The Secret History and this, for me, is undoubtedly the best of her three offerings. Detailed but not overwhelming. The hero, Theo Decker, is traumatised early on in the story and spends the rest of the novel trying to find a place in the world where he can fit in where his morals are not compromised.

I love Tartt's writing style and language. The conversations sound exactly right. They remind me of the joy I got when I read Martin Amis, another writer whose language is exquisite.