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Originally Posted by Chron
What you gave the story was a cursory glance rather than drinking it in like it deserves. That you dismissed everything as:
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Sorry, no. I went into the story reading it as I would any other book. I gave it to about halfway when I started seeing characters being parading around. It was still fairly ok around that point because I was following Vance's thinking. Most of my complaints come from looking back at the novel after it was finished and finding that nothing much else was going on with the main characters. Or any of the faceless, nameless, who-cares suspects.
Which is why I wanted to know if it improves. Because maybe the main characters were meant to be developed further along in the series. But apparently I don't get the answer to that question because I somehow read it "wrong." Which is a patently absurd reaction to my query.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chron
Well, frankly, I can't imagine what else that could mean other than you simply not paying attention to the writing.
Van Dine's style is about much, much more than the puzzle itself, this is especially true with the Benson case. If you just didn't like it, then I wouldn't object to a matter of taste, but to simply dismiss a classic Golden Age story like that as bad, well, then I really have to call foul on your assessment.
The Benson case is a classic for the writing in it, and there's a lot more to that story than just being dry. It deserves more credit than you're giving it.
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If you actually bothered to read my message, you'll notice that I said I didn't like it much except for the first chapter. I asked if the writing gets better (and the mystery). I didn't actually say it was bad.
So I thank you for being the one to bring up the word 'bad' with this novel.
But anyways, about the story... Sorry, but there really isn't much else there. Please name something if you think there is rather than making this somehow a problem with *me*.
The only things I can think of that are 'there' are the elements about the puzzle and the reasoning behind the puzzle. That I got and they were fairly decent. I can see that even though this is Van Dine's first novel that he has the basic mechanics of writing a mystery down fairly well.
But this is supposedly a novel, right? Not some kind of simple logic puzzle. So you can't tell me that the characters Vance, Markham and Van Dine were anything other than totally flat. Maybe that's how he wanted to play it out, but it really is boring then to watch flat characters go around as mouth-pieces of the author.
If there's a lack of character development, or even characterization (except for Vance who we get a good description of) then normally we should have some kind of interesting plot. But the plot consisted mostly of them going around talking to people. Or, wow, sometimes the people come to them!
The only somewhat interesting twist, which, if you were somehow not paying attention is that Markham never gets his ideas right. That's it.
Actually, I went on to his second book (I think, going by publishing date), the Canary Murder Case and I was utterly shocked that Van Dine actually *said* something. "By all means," was his first utterance. Did he even say anything in the previous novel? And also Vance seems to be undergoing some more characterization.
So maybe it picks up later on.
Which is what I was trying to ask. Honestly, telling me that somehow I read it "wrong" without telling me anything else about how great the book is is not very useful. You could have at least told me that it gets better later... does it?
Or maybe it doesn't and you know these stories remain rather flat and you have to take it out on me, personally.