Tag: Death Comes as the End

I Will Run to You

Sunday morning, I am up early, and it’s 35 degrees here. No snow here that I am aware of, but some places along the Gulf Coast did get snow, like Gulf Shores, Alabama. This morning is the best I’ve felt in the morning this entire weekend, and I think after yesterday’s low-energy-didn’t-even-unload-the-dishwasher day, it’ll be nice to get things done this morning and have a nice day. I did run those errands yesterday, so I don’t have to leave the house today (tomorrow may be a different story); and it’s warm and cozy inside this morning, too, which is marvelous–can some time in my easy chair with a book and a blanket be in my future? Absolutely! I am also going to shave and get thoroughly cleaned up this morning, too. AMBITIOUS, right? Getting up early and feeling genuinely rested is a lovely feeling, I must say.

We finished Run Away last night, which was fun and interesting and went into an entirely different path than I expected from the beginning. We then moved on to the new Agatha Christie adaptation, Seven Dials, which is based on one of my favorite Agatha Christies, The Seven Dials Mystery. I’ve always been an odd Christie fan; I started reading her when I was about ten or eleven, and spent most of my teens reading the entire Christie canon. While I did enjoy her more famous and iconic novels, my favorites of hers have always been lesser-known, and are probably considered her weaker ones. My absolute favorite is Endless Night, followed by The Secret of Chimneys, Death Comes as the End, N or M?, and The Pale Horse, among others. I really liked the character of Bundle (Lady Eileen Brent), and she is quite fun in this adaptation as well. We watched the first two episodes last night, and there is one more to go today. I suppose we’ll watch Stranger Things next, as completists, but there’s a lot of good shows to watch at the current moment, a tough problem to have.

As I mentioned, yesterday wound up being a low energy day. I didn’t run all the errands I needed to, cutting some things out because I was tired and didn’t want to push my luck. I did make groceries at Rouses and the Fresh Market, but after bringing everything in I was pretty wiped for the rest of the day, and my brain couldn’t really focus enough to read, so it was back to documentaries for me in the afternoon while Sparky napped in my lap. I did clean up and organize some computer files–an endless task indeed–which I will probably do more of today. The apartment isn’t neat and orderly, but it’s getting there. Today may also be a “prune the books” kind of day, too. I definitely need to empty the dishwasher and take the recycling out, for sure, and get the rugs back in order. It’s weird to have tomorrow of as well, but…there are worse things. I took Wednesday off for a funeral, too, so this is going to be a very strange week for me. Normality will return next week, but then it’s Carnival.

Sigh.

I’m really getting used to–and spoiled–by all this time off from work.

Despite the temperature, it’s beautiful and sunny outside today, with a blue sky and no clouds to be seen anywhere. I just saw that it also snowed in Pensacola, which is wild…Pensacola being about two hours or so from New Orleans east on I-10. Snow below I-10 is kind of crazy; I always joke that I moved south of I-10 specifically to avoid cold weather. I definitely need to write a Scotty set during the blizzard last year…I’ve decided to jump ahead with the series rather than trying to keep the books in a continuous timeframe, realizing at the way things are going in a couple of years the books would be considered historical fiction if I kept on the way I was, so I am going to skip ahead and recap in the intro to the next one. I can also go back and write more that are out of order, if need be; other series have done that, too.

And on that note, I am going to get another cup of coffee and read for a bit. Have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning.

Do You Know What I Mean

The traditional mystery often gets a bum rap by mystery fans. I’m not sure why that is; these books have never gone out of style, have never decreased in popularity, and have always been the backbone of the crime/mystery genre. They are often (wrongly, I think) identified with Agatha Christie–if anything, Christie should be identified with every sub-genre of crime/mystery fiction. She wrote private eye novels (Poirot); dark noir (Endless Night); spy fiction (N or M?, The Man in the Brown Suit, They Came to Baghdad); historicals (Death Comes as the End); and even romantic suspense (as Mary Westmacott). Sure, she often relied on the amateur sleuth–her most famous amateur being probably Miss Marple–but she literally did everything first, really.

Probably why everyone refers to her as the Queen of Crime Fiction.

But the traditional mystery, for some reason, gets short shrift in our modern world, despite being one of the most popular subgenres of crime fiction. Why? I don’t really understand it. Sure, there’s not any blood or sex or violence–the sort of thing generally used to sell everything from television shows to movies to laundry soap and deoderant. Many of us grew up reading books about amateur detectives, from Nancy Drew to the Hardy Boys to Trixie Belden. So why do so many turn their noses up at the traditional mystery, also known as the cozy mystery?

I think it’s much harder to write about crime without using the tough guy male lead (stereotype), blood, violence, swear words, and sex. Is it this lack of the “rougher” aspects of crime that earned these books the nickname “cozy”?

What precisely does the word cozy mean, used as a book descriptor in this way? Ask five mystery fans/writers, and you will get five different answers. It’s often hard to quantify the variety of subgenres within the mystery/crime field. Everything else aside, I think the most important thing, the key, for a mystery novel to get this kind of classification is that the book focuses, on one level, on a sense of community; the reader develops a warm, comfortable feeling, the kind that you usually get from visiting family and friends you don’t get to see all of the time. You open the book and start reading and already feel relaxed and at home; happy to see people you care about, are interested in, and are excited to find out what they have been up to. Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow series is an excellent example of this; so is Leslie Budewitz’ Spice Shop mystery series (both series, obviously, are favorites of mine). These books welcome you in, invite you to put your feet up, get comfortable, and spend some time with your old friends you’ve not seen in a while.

This, naturally, is very difficult to establish when writing the first book in a new series of this kind; how do you immediately establish this warm environment where the reader feels comfortable enough to kick off their shoes and relax? It’s not the easiest thing to pull off for an accomplished writer; so it’s all the more remarkable when someone nails it in their very first book.

Mia P. Manansala nailed it in her debut.

My name is Lila Macapagal and my life has become a rom-com cliché.

Not many romantic comedies feature an Asian-American (or dead bodies, but more on that later), but all the hallmarks are there.

Girl from an improbably named small town in the Midwest moves to the big city to make a name for herself and find love? Check.

Girl achieves these things only for the world to come crashing down when she walks in on her fiancé getting down and dirty with their next-door neighbors (yes, plural)? Double check.

Girl then moves back home in disgrace and finds work reinvigorating her aunt’s failing business? Well now we’re up to a hat trick of clichés.

And to put the cherry on top, in the trope of all tropes, I even reconnected with my high school sweetheart after moving back to town and discovered the true meaning of Christmas.

Okay, that last part is a joke, but I really did run into my high school sweetheart. Derek Winter, my first love.

First of all, can we talk about the voice?

It is impossible not to fall in love with Lila’s voice from the very first sentence of the book. She is smart and funny and eminently likable, which is important in a traditional mystery (no one wants to read a cozy whose main character is an unlikable bitch) and much harder to do than most people who don’t actually write books think it is. Lila is a remarkable character; very clear-eyed about what she wants and what she doesn’t, as well as who she thinks she is and wants to be. She’s returned from her big escape to the big city to the small town she wasn’t terribly happy in when she was growing up–her past experiences continually are reminding her, and not in pleasant way, of why she left in the first place. She never intended to return home (as Thomas Wolfe said, you can’t go home again), but she is back and rather than focusing on what she is certain everyone she knows or is related to sees as her “failure,” she intends instead to focus on helping save her aunt’s restaurant business.

The immense strength of this story rests upon those family bonds, and Lila’s recognition of just how important those bonds–family, friends, community–actually are to her; and her growing realization, over the course of the books, that those things she once thought were strangling and restraining her are actually where her own power comes from.

The mystery itself is also strong: Lila’s wretched local ex, whose mother has since married a businessman who rents Tita Rosie’s building to her and is a total dick, has taken to writing shitty reviews of local restaurants, apparently targeting one and trying to destroy its business before moving on to another. Lila’s relationship with him is also strained; and she also doesn’t like the dickish stepfather either. It is while she is serving them lunch that her ex keels over face-first into his plate–dead from arsenic poisoning. In the food Lila fed him, and came from her aunt’s kitchen. The financially strapped business is shut down pending an investigation into the murder and a health department inspection, and there is the very real fear that Tita Rosie may lose her restaurant. Lila takes it upon herself to investigate and find the real culprit, to clear herself as well as her aunt and the beloved family business of any wrongdoing and scandal. The journey, which introduces us to her friends and family, and welcomes the reader into their charming world and community, twists and turns and is full of surprises every step along the way–as Lila also learns just how much the restaurant, her family, and her friends really mean to her.

This book is absolutely charming, well-written, and very fun. I cannot wait to revisit Lila and her crew in the second book, Homicide and Halo-Halo. Mia P. Manansala is definitely one to watch, and it’s going to be fun watching her career reaching even more heights than she has already achieved.