Review: The Affair of the Mutilated Mink by James Anderson

The cover of my copy.

Genre: Historical murder mystery; detective fiction.
Themes: Murder, secrets, false identities, false pretences, unexpected visitors, movies, young love.

Reading challenge: What's in a Name 2016

Challenge book no.: 4/6, a book with an item of clothing in the title.

The titular mink (a coat) is the property of one of the characters in this frothy and funny country-house murder mystery. (You will have to read the book if you want to know how and why it got mutilated).

The Affair of the Mutilated Mink and the books that preceded it and followed it, The Affair of the Blood-stained Egg Cosy and The Affair of the 39 Cufflinks, have been justifiably called tributes to the Golden Era mystery, and one quickly realises that it doesn't take place in some unspecified version of the 1930s, but specifically the 1930s of the detective novels of Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Michael Innes, whose detectives, Wimsey, Alleyn and Appleby, are all mentioned in the story. Additionally, when a crime novel is mentioned, it isn't Agatha Christie who has written it, but her fictional author Ariadne Oliver.

I like this cover better!

This is the second in a series of three country house mysteries featuring Inspector Wilkins and the Earl of Burford and his family. The family are unlucky enough to have three separate homicides take place at Alderley, their country home, in a short period of time, and each is covered in one book.

House-parties are a popular theme for creating interesting plots, not just in mysteries, but in romances and other kinds of novels, and this is no exception. In this volume, an impromptu house-party is formed when the Earl, who is an avid movie fan, invites an American film producer and a movie star to visit the estate to inspect it with a view of using it as the set for a film, at the same time the Countess has invited her cousin and her husband to visit, and their daughter has invited her two suitors with the intention of seeing them together and comparing them so she can decide which one to become engaged to. However, this is not the end to the arrivals: In the wake of the actor and producer there follow several uninvited visitors. Most of the guests are harbouring secrets of some sort and most are not what they seem.

I also like this one.

The characters range from fairly well-rounded to flat stereotypes.The Earl of Burford is a delightful, if somewhat eccentric gent, his wife is at first sight a typical formidable dragoness, but ends up showing unexpected qualities for the type. Their daughter is a typical bright young thing and it's interesting to follow the interplay between her and her two suitors. The guests are a typical country house mystery melange, and the detective is a refreshing change from the self-assured sleuths of the era. Personality-wise, Inspector Wilkins is the polar opposite of detectives like the arrogant Poirot and the self-assured Alleyn, being humble and self-deprecating, but he is just as able a case-solver as any of the three A's: Alleyn, Appleby and St. John Allgood of the Yard. The last one is a supremely arrogant ass who is sent in to investigate the crime and I don't think I'm tossing in too much of a spoiler when I say that he makes a fool of himself in the process, because one can see it coming as soon as the turns up. That debacle is one of the more obvious plot twists (along with another that is a perfect classic twist), but there are plenty of other twists, upon red herrings upon more twists, that should be hard enough to figure out to please any fan of twisty mysteries.

All in all, I found this to be a delightful and funny tribute to the Golden era mystery, and I will be on the lookout for the other two books.

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

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