Customer Reviews

The Act of Roger Murgatroyd (Evadne Mount Trilogy)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I sent away for this book to Amazon UK because I couldn't wait for Carroll & Graf in NYC to issue the US edition in September 2007. When the package arrived I was all a tremble, just like in the days of my childhood when a new Agatha Christie would arrive just in time for Christmas. Gilbert Adair's one of my favorite contemporary novelists, and I loved what he did for the Alice books and Peter Pan too, so I anticipated that his re-imagining of Christie's MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS would be a great treat. But was I ever wrong! It's just kind of crummy and unsuspenseful and written, as far as I can see, without any real love or even respect for the genre.

The traditional trappings may all be there, but until the very end of the book there's no detective work at all. All the suspects just relate their innermost secrets without any provocation, it's totally unbelievable and of course, wildly different than anything Christie ever wrote. I did enjoy Evadne Mount, but it's silly to say she is anything like Christie (or like Ariadne Oliver, the fictional detective novelist Christie enjoyed using as her spokeswoman). She and the actress Cora Rutherford are just patchwork nonce figures made up out of the lurid parts of old Tallulah Bankhead scrapbooks. It's as though Adair must have thought, that his plot was such a corker there was no need to inevtn characters to populate it.

If THE ACT OF ROGER MURGATROYD is a pastiche of anything, it's a pastiche of MURDER BY DEATH, the insipid Neil Simon comedy movie of the 1970s. Gilbert Adair, when you went straight you forgot that you would lose your sense of humor; now you're a mere emblem of your former glory.

Oops, I should say no more. In the British press, the only unfavorable review of MURGATROYD was written by Michael Dibdin, -- and look what happened to him! Critical voodoo!

First the warning:

Of all the dark secrets disclosed in this book, the most alarming comes late in the novel---when the detective reveals the solutions to Israel Zangwill's "The Big Bow Mystery", and Gaston Laroux's "The Mystery of the Yellow Room". Am I alone in thinking it pretty unsporting to give away other authors' twists? Reader beware.

Now the review:

Worth reading, not worth getting ones knickers in a twist over. The po-mo "ludic" literary conceits could have been integrated into the story with far more subtlety than they were. As it stands, most of the novel seems like padding for the textual games; and while I did enjoy the author's rigid adherence to the "No Chinaman" rule (cf. Knox), these literary tricks mostly left me unimpressed.

Adair succeeds in evoking the classic golden age mystery with his snowbound-country-house-party-embroiled-in murder tale. It includes eccentric English country characters, an impossible murder in a locked room, and amateur sleuths. It also had maybe a few too many long monologues from each character, but if you let yourself be taken along for the ride it's great fun.

A well-paced mystery story, and an intelligent pastiche with elements of parody. Definitely an entertainment! If you are a fan of the golden-age detective story and are drawn to this book by its title - read it. Once for the pleasure of the mystery, and a second time to savour the details.