Just Finished Reading: The Veiled Woman by Anais Nin [56pp] 

Erotica, modern classic or not, isn’t really my ‘thing’ but I had promised myself that I would read everything – in order – (including POETRY!) from both of my recent Penguin Classics boxsets regardless. Afterall, I did buy them specifically to expand my reading horizons! 

So, this booklet contained four short stories extracted from the authors collections Delta of Venus (1977) and Little Birds (1979). Although I remember them being quite controversial at the time I suspect that they’d seem quite tame these days. In my general reading I tend to skim-read any sex scenes as I regard them as, largely, pointless and often lazy. Likewise, if I’m watching a movie at home, I’ll FW through any sex scene which rarely progresses the story and is, all too often, the product of lazy writing and (to be honest) a BAD film. 

Anyway – to the reading itself! The first story, the titled ‘Veiled Woman’ revolved around a husband essentially ‘pimping’ for his supposedly ‘frigid’ wife whilst also charging for other men to watch the result through a false mirror. Then we had ‘Linda’ a tale of a free spirit who discovered the price of that freedom. Then ‘Mandra’ a tale of a woman looking for love in New York. Finally, we had ‘Marianne’ about a female artists relationship with her male model. 

Overall, the stories were certainly readable if not exactly works of art. They were definitely erotic at times and are not recommended for those of more sensitive tastes. Needless to say, that I have no intention of reading this author further. I have FAR too much else to read that’s (no doubt) a lot more fun! 

Just Finished Reading: The Measure of Malice – Scientific Detective Stories edited by Martin Edwards (FP: 2020) [321pp] 

As always with any collection of stories from various authors – even Classic ones – books like these tend to be a bit of a roller-coaster in quality. Styles change over a century or more and such changes don’t always translate too well for a more modern reader. That said this was in no way a bad collection of stories. It wasn’t. 

Things started out strong with (inevitably) a Sherlock Holmes tale The Boscombe Valley Mystery (1891) where a young man is accused of murder based on circumstantial evidence. As Holmes investigates a number of pieces of physical evidence acquired at the scene points towards his innocence. The next story, The Horror of Studley Grange (1894) by L T Meade and Clifford Halifax, whilst interesting (or weird depending on your PoV) rested too much on two of my particular bugbears where ‘thrillers’ are concerned: the unreliable narrator or liar as I prefer to call them and the fact that strange things/occurrences are taken at face value – even when they’re clearly irrational/unreasonable - until the detective (in this case a doctor) decides that things don’t make sense and starts to actually INVESTIGATE things! I can only imagine that in that age the author didn’t expect his readership to think scientifically or forensically about the case being presented to them.  

Doctors seemed to be a regular stand-in for detectives for a considerable time and appeared at least as subject matter experts (SMEs) in a number of tales in this collection including a fun little one called The Cyprian Bees (1924) by Anthony Wynne. As you might expect the murder ‘weapon’ was a rather unusual one. I’m not 100% sure that the science would work as advertised in the story, but it was definitely an interesting way to do the deed! Along with the medical profession a classic detective substitute is the insurance company investigator. A very good example of this was The Contents of a Mare’s Nest (1927) by R Austin Freeman where a claim is questioned despite (or rather because of) the body of the deceased being rather hastily cremated to avoid forensic examination. Or so the perpetrator thought! 

I’ll just mention two more. The Broken Toad (1934) by H C Bailey had a convoluted plot and a very nice piece of misdirection which kept me guessing right to the end and In the Teeth of the Evidence (1939) by Dorothy L Sayers which revolved around the expert evidence of a local dentist after an apparent suicide turns out to be something far more sinister. 

Overall, despite a few wobbles and niggles, this was a solid collection of detective shorts with a definite science bias – although the ‘science’ involved was at least once on very dodgy ground! As always with such things this is an excellent way to get into classic crime or to find new authors to try out in future novels. Recommended.   

Welcome to December. We made it! As its now *officially* Winter - according to the Met Office at least - there will be a noticeable uptick of Winter, Christmas & (next month) New Years related posts. So, wrap up warm and hopefully enjoy.... Oh, and there's even going to be a few Winter related book posts.....