More meandering on Crime Novels

[oursin]

I commented a few months ago on the advisability of hawkshaws having a posse - or at least supporting characters, I'm not sure Poirot or Miss Marple exactly have posses but they do have supporting characters who recur from book to book, like Ariadne Oliver or Marple's nephew and so on.

And having lately read that Lorac mystery with what seemed a rather colourless series 'tec (though maybe over the course of the series he develops or has more character?) I was thinking of all those freebie 'Golden Age' crime novels I have been sent (I still have no idea how I got on the distribution list), many of which were part of sometimes immensely long series, which also had distinctly unmemorable series investigator. Perhaps weighting the thing a bit more towards Puzzle or - perhaps? - Groups of Weird Suspects.

Query - in the case of Ngaio Marsh doesn't she rather start out with having Gang of Eccentrics or Eccentric Family into whom she drops Alleyn, and over the volumes he starts becoming a character in his own right, falling in love with a suspect, and so on.

(Wimsey was the ur-figure for falling love with the suspect, y/n? Campion I think had form for crushing on ladies mixed up in his cases but not actual suspects - in one case, Dancers in Mourning, the wife of a suspect.)

(I also had a thought here that in the old-school Golden/Silver Age mystery if the detective falls in love with a suspect, they didn't do it: in noir, of course they had.)

Then there's a point (I think?) when it becomes perhaps a little bit too much about the inner angst of the detective (Lynley, I'm looking at you), rather than just having one with, you know, interiority (e.g. Wexford). And do not get me on to the swathe (I have a definite sense that this verges now on the cliche) of central characters with substance abuse/relationship problems/job issues etc before a crime even happens.

***

On entirely unrelated subject, I spotted this on Ask a Manager this morning: My new job requires me to take an oath of allegiance (#5 at link):

I will work for the University of California with my salary paid by a federal grant. I received my onboarding paperwork today, and along with all the normal stuff, it included an “Oath of Allegiance.”

Summoning the shade of Decca Mitford, who was invited to teach a course at San Jose State University in 1973 and got into an immense fracas over loyalty oath and finger-printing.

Comments

[calimac]

Thanks for bringing up Decca Mitford, because the respondent to the question didn't have anything to say other than yep, it's required. I knew that the 1973 fracas didn't get rid of it, but I didn't know it's still there. (I've had academic jobs in California, but my only one at a state university was in a fill-in pool, and I had to sign no oath.)

The letter-writer is correct that it's insane, especially the part where it says "I take this oath freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion." Decca wanted to cross that out and write "I take this oath under duress, as a condition of employment," but they said she couldn't do that. So, she asked, you're asking me to perjure myself as a condition of employment?

That was a good point, but it didn't seem to get answered.

[antisoppist]

I think Sayers said that Trent's Last Case (1913) was the first detective novel in which the detective falls in love but I get the impression that when she was writing the writers were arguing about proper puzzle novels versus ones with girly emotional stuff in and that's why she wrote Five Red Herrings to prove that it wasn't that she was incapable of writing a complicated plot based on railway timetables.

[oursin]

Oh yes, Trent's Last Case, not I think that there had been previous episodes!

it wasn't that she was incapable of writing a complicated plot based on railway timetables.
But why bother... I think some of the 'proper puzzles' I've come across are not really all that deuced ingenious.

[hairyears]

Does the requirement for an Oath of Allegiance disbar foreign nationals?

...Also, how are they accommodating Quakers, who do not take oaths?

The story of how that happened is out there somewhere - permitting them to omit the Oath, or substitute an affirmation - but the USA had a de facto Test Act excluding Quakers for at least part of its existence as a Republic.

[oursin]

I see - looking up the Oath of Allegiance, and this may differ in difference contexts - it does include 'before God'/'so help me, God', which is problematic for agnostics and atheists (and polytheists?). Have posted here about hoohahs over Charles Bradlaugh wishing to affirm when sworn in as MP (as pillar of secularist movement) and the Marquess of Queensberry unable to take his seat in the Lords for similar reasons. However, the first MP of South Asian origins was a Parsi Zoroastrian and sworn in on the Khordeh Avesta.

[mrissa]

I always wonder whether unmemorable central characters are meant to be a blank slate for the reader to project themself on. This does not work on me, but I've heard it works on some other people, the Everyman etc. The thing is that I know loads of quite boring people--I try not to know them well, but I've met them--so "this person doesn't have a lot of distinct characteristics" never makes me think "I should assume they're like me in some important way." I have lots of distinct characteristics! It always makes me think, "Oh, like the neighbors across the street" or whatever other example. And I don't want to spend an entire book with them.

I often end up feeling that the substance abuse/relationship problems-centered characters are basically that but with Added Drama. It's very rare that I think, wow, this is a really good handling of a complex character who is an addict. Much more commonly I think, "Yeah, I know several people who don't have a lot of distinct characteristics but are sad and drink too much. Still doesn't make them interesting."

[oursin]

Yes, I've seen that argument, that you make Central Character generic (which has its own problems of unexamined assumptions and so on) for audience identification. Last week we were watching the classic Hollywood movie of David Copperfield and that really does have central character who is utterly a foil for all the Dickensian eccentrics eccentricing around him (poor Agnes, run away with the circus, do, you will be bored out of your mind), but that's possibly a different thing.

I'm now thinking about all those endless series of cozy mysteries where the central character has quirky occupation that somehow has her constantly falling over bodies (and also boyfriend/bestie in local law enforcement) which is perhaps similar attempt to give person something to make them Interesting.

[ethelmay]

"Every good writer knows that the more unusual the scenes and events of his story are, the slighter, the more ordinary, the more typical his persons should be. Hence Gulliver is a commonplace little man and Alice is a commonplace little girl. If they had been more remarkable they would have wrecked their books. The Ancient Mariner himself is a very ordinary man. To tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much; he who is to see strange sights must not himself be strange." —C.S. Lewis

But that's specifically about stories regarding very strange events, not slice-of-life books.

[mrissa]

Also, I think CS Lewis was very wrong on this point, and he is the last person I would trust on what is an oddity too much.