| Pop Culture Gadabout | ||
|
Saturday, June 18, 2011 ( 6/18/2011 04:39:00 PM ) Bill S.  “ORDER AND METHOD” A hot summer morning getting the PT Cruiser’s air conditioning repaired – so to keep myself from stressing too much about the upcoming prognosis, I sat in the shop revisiting a classic whodunnit. Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1921) is a genre milestone for two reasons: it’s the mystery grand dame's first novel -- and the debut of her first established character, Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot. As such, it’s a big moment in the history of old-fashioned detective fiction.It'd been decades since I first read this cozy little puzzle, so I had scant memory of its story. As a mystery, Styles doesn’t measure up to peak Dame Agatha, though it has its considerable charms. Narrated by Captain Arthur Hastings -- a Watson who managed to be so consistently wrongheaded that he makes Sherlock Holmes’ foil look like a master of deductive reasoning -- the book centers on a murder at an Essex country place peopled with a large cast of likely suspects. When wealthy philanthropist Emily Inglethorpe is poisoned, the first one suspected is her unpleasant newish husband, Alfred. Over the course of this compact mystery, though, nearly everybody in Styles Court -- not one, but two stepsons; servants; foreign looking doctor, et al -- gets accused, only to have each accusation overturned by the man with the “little grey cells.” Poirot conveniently comes into the picture after Hastings, who describes his own ambitions to some day become a detective, happens upon the famous sleuth at the village post office. When murder most foul is perpetrated, Poirot gets called in on Hasting’s recommendation, even though our narrator can't help wondering if the elderly detective is as acute as he used to be. Of the all the great classic sleuths, the refugee Belgian is arguably the most lightheartedly portrayed: an egg-headed (we’re told his pate is shaped like one) egotist prone to preening and baiting the unquestionably dim Hastings. To be fair, Poirot’s mistreatment of our narrator is largely justified -- at one point in the story, Hastings doesn’t give the detective information necessary to solve the case. Poirot’s comic mien contributes to both Hastings and the inevitably equally wrongheaded Scotland Yarders underestimating him, but we, of course, know that he’ll tidily wrap it all up. Though it’s not made clear in this book (one suspects because Christie didn’t yet realize it), Poirot’s persona was, in part, a tactic used by the detective to get suspects to reveal more than they intended. He was, in his caricature foreigner fashion, a precursor to Lieutenant Columbo. As a slice of period country life, Styles has its moments of mild humor (some of it concerning bachelor Hastings’ hapless pursuit of a comely suspect), though Christie’s handling of this material isn’t as smooth as it would later get. (You don’t go to Agatha Christie for sparkling character comedy, even if some of the movie adaptations of her works make it appear that way.) Still, when we arrive at Hercule’s drawing room explanation, the ultimate solution proves satisfying enough that we forgive this young writer’s occasional stilted constructions. Better Poirot puzzles were ahead (Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile among ‘em), but as a first step Styles remains a diverting summer read. Kept me from worrying too much about my car repairs, at least -- which is exactly what you want from a work like this, right? (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: tidy little mysteries # |Friday, June 17, 2011 ( 6/17/2011 05:06:00 AM ) Bill S.  “SOLVE THE EASY BITS FIRST.” The latest volume of “Modesty Blaise” strip reprints from Titan Books, The Double Agent opens with plenty of plaudits for creator Peter O’Donnell, the man who guided the adventuress/agent through nearly forty years of prose and newspaper comics adventures. Many of the comics lights that you’d expect to see in a tribute to the man show up -- Neal Gaiman, Greg Rucka, Walt Simonson -- but to lovers of this incomparable pulp heroine, all the reader need ask is, “Where does this collection stack up against earlier Blaise books?”So let’s just note that old pro O’Donnell, writing these strips in the mid-eighties, hadn’t started flagging yet. The three adventures collected in Agent show both the writer and his heroine continuing to play to their strengths: Modesty is as sexy-tough as ever; loyal comrade Willie Garvin remains his canny blade-wielding self, and the villains in the strip continue to be some of the believably thuggish in all of newspaper comics. Two of the stories in this outing hinge on plots against intelligence higher-ups -- French “cloak and dagger chap” René Vaubois and British intelligence head Sir Gerald Tarrant -- with former international criminal Blaise being the only one capable of foiling the dastardly plots against ‘em. We wouldn’t expect anything less of her. Of the three tales included herein, I’d give the edge to the title piece, which involves a plot by a vengeful Russian agent to frame our heroine for Sir Gerald’s murder, using a Russian-trained body double, a circus bear and a sinister clown. When Willie sees the faux Modesty for the first time, he immediately recognizes her for a fraud. “She had the wrong aura, wrong essense, wrong vibes,” he explains to his sometime girlfriend Maude Tiller. Definitely an of-its-era explanation. The remaining entries -- Blaise and Garvin’s battles against a Corsican bandit and a revived Thuggee cult -- also have their genre pleasures: straight-ahead action yarns set in exotic locales and told without a hint of ironic self-consciousness. As a storyteller, O’Donnell had too much respect for his series lead to undermine her, though he wasn’t averse to tossing in a comic secondary character for back-up. In this volume, it’s twittish good Samaritan Doctor Giles Pennyfeather. All three strips in Agent represent the last “Blaise” work done by artist Neville Colvin, who was on the job for six years. A skilled pen-and-ink man who we’re told initially was somewhat nervous about drawing an action heroine, Colvin quickly warmed to the task -- as beautifully demonstrated by the final fight scene ‘tween Modesty and her drug-enhanced doppelganger. One panel showing the twosome flying around each other proves particularly memorable. Also worth noting: a showdown in an earlier tale between a wounded Modesty and a brutish gangster known as the Wild Boar. As captured by Colvin, the mismatch reads as physically challenging as James Bond’s battle against the hulking Odd Job. Bond, we should probably note, at the time of these strips was appearing in his last ragged Roger Moore flick -- alongside a title heroine who seemed more than a little inspired by our Modesty. Still, the former crime leader, described by one French inspector as a “better class of criminal” than the “men without souls” currently overseeing the criminal world, has it all over Bond’s Octopussy. Ten years after her last original strip, Modesty Blaise remains Willie Garvin’s “princess” -- and ours, too. (First published on Blogcritics.) Labels: classic comic strips # | |
|
|
