Thursday, September 20, 2012

The Mystery of a French Mystery Novel's Rapid Downward Spiral

Hello! Yesterday, I finished reading 813 by Maurice Leblanc, which was my next book to finish in the early 20th century French series (though I'm reading it in English) about the "gentleman thief" Arsene Lupin. I have a lot of enthusiasm for the series, partially because it's very entertaining and partially because Adult Swim used to show an anime, Lupin the III, which was very loosely based on the books, so my opinions on the novel are probably pretty biased. That's not to say that I've loved every one of the Arsene Lupin novels. The Hollow Needle in particular drove me up a wall, since I really disliked Beautrelet, the brilliant and remarkably cocky young detective on Lupin's trail, and I thought the last half of it was a little boring, too. 813, however, was a fast-paced, entertaining and enjoyable novel until about the last fourth of the book.

 I don't know what I could say about any of it without spoiling the whole thing, as spoiler alerts are very important to avoid with books that are nearly 100 years old, but during the last part of the book, I almost slammed my Kindle shut and shoved it back in my purse. My first problem with it was that, in the final stretch of the main story, there was a series of events that happened that, though it was perfectly logical, was so infuriating and depressing that it made me actively angry to read it. If that would have been the end of it, I would have been fine with the whole thing. After all of that happens, however, and a bit before it, too, there are so many false endings that it just gets to be sort of funny. I can think of at least four instances where the whole story could have ended, ready to go to the next book in the series, but Leblanc decided to keep going after each of them. By the time Lupin joins the French Foreign Legion (which is a spoiler, but not a very applicable one), I was not quite sure why the book hadn't ended.

Despite my complaints about the last part of 813, it was still an interesting book that I'd recommend with the same warning I posted above. If you'd like to read it, too, the full text can be downloaded in several formats from Project Gutenberg or as a Kindle book from Amazon.com.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Rubbish Sci-Fi and Spiffy Pulp Novels

Hello! It's been a bit since I last posted here, so I have read multiple books since the time of my last entry. Because there are several books to talk about, I don't have a fancy picture of a book cover to put up, for which I apologize. Hopefully, however, the tale of my treks through free book lists shall prove sufficient entertainment for all of you who have somehow stumbled across this blog.

Plenzes, by Chris Lang, wasn't the first thing that I read since my last post, but since it isn't a pulp novel, it gets its own special paragraph. I would very much like to be nice when talking about this sci-fi short story, which I found for free on Kindle through http://www.ereaderiq.com/, but it is difficult. The author did have a lot of interesting and well-thought out ideas about the future of social networking, and they didn't seem as far-fetched or terrifying as they probably should have. However, his main character was an unlikable and abusive jerk, the twist at the end came out of nowhere, and the whole thing was plagued with typos. I don't think that I would have gotten through the story had it been a full length novel.

The other two books that I read, The Big Sin by Jack Webb (which was also obtained as a free Kindle book from Amazon) and The Corpse That Walked by Octavius Roy Cohen (from http://www.munseys.com/), were much more entertaining. Admittedly, I really enjoy reading old pulp novels, especially if they seem to think logic and reality are bothers while telling a story, so I'll probably post quite a bit about them in the future. I have read some of them that are so idiotic that even I can't stand them, though, and luckily, neither of these novels falls under that category.

I have to say that of the two books, The Big Sin is undoubtedly the better novel. It's more realistic, more thoughtful, has more likable characters, and is bereft of any major plot holes. It was a quick read that never got boring for a page, and it would be easy to recommend to anyone who really wants to read a book from the 1950s about a priest and a Jewish cop solving the murder of a Mexican showgirl. The Corpse That Walked, however, is about a nice, honest, and not all that smart guy who gets plastic surgery so he can pretend to be a wanted criminal while people are trying to kill him and his intrepid go-getter girlfriend poses as a reporter to uncover the sordid truth behind his exploits. It is ridiculous, over-the-top, and never even tries to be plausible, so, naturally, it was much more entertaining than the more serious novel that took the time to think about religion, prejudice, and justice. The beginning of The Corpse That Walked is painfully slow, particularly if you're reading it a chapter at a time at 1 in the morning, but once it picks up at about the halfway point, its hard to argue against the borderline insanity of the plot being, at the very least, interesting.

Yesterday, I started reading 813 by Maurice Leblanc, so that will at least be included in an upcoming post. Until then, however, I'm hoping to at least keep this blog surviving!