32-33/50: two more by PF Chisholm
Dec. 4th, 2008 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI've not been able to resist finishing PF Chisholm's books about Sir Robert Carey. Mental popcorn is about right. She does her research and she isn't an awful writer, but she's also not that great, and it shows through (among other ways) in how fast one can suck down her books. There's plot, and description, but not much more. Her characters don't have much interior dialogue. They don't seem to have much going on inside at all, in fact. They don't grow and change. They don't think much about what isn't right in front of them.
Then there's the historical aspect. One reason I like reading history (and, by extension, historical novels) is to get a sense of how people and society in the past were different to us and similar. Chisholm doesn't have a very deft touch with this. For the most part, her characters act and think more or less like modern people, except when she clearly approaches one of her predesignated "see, people in the past were really different" teaching points, at which she becomes terrifically heavy handed in the application of the underlining pen.
In A Surfeit of Guns, Carey and his sergeant, Dodd, head up to Scotland to track down a shipment of guns. There's a little violence, a little sex, and a good deal of intrigue. There's a sort of mystery but, as with the earlier volumes, it's not really the sort of Conan Doyle mystery that you can figure out from the facts you are given by the writer. It's more or less process of elimination, as you know the guilty party must be someone you're introduced to formally; there's never any great subtlety to the stories or any complexity to the plots.
Her final Carey novel, A Plague of Angels, takes her two-man team of Carey and Dodd to London, where they are supposed to locate his brother but end up getting involved in a great deal of skullduggery. They also encounter several Elizabethan luminaries, including the writers William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Carey's own father, Henry Carey, and the politician Thomas Heneage. Now, I have a special loathing of historical novelists who feel they need to introduce their own "take" on historical characters that their audience believes itself very familiar with, especially attempts to make larger than life people seem like 'just regular folks' or to portray notables as bumptious or foolish. Carey's involvement with these characters comes off (to me) as contrived, rather as if the author has said "Gee, why don't we send the character to London! He can meet Shakespeare and Marlowe!"
All that said, she knows the personalities and their interactions. Greene delivers the diatribes against Shakespeare he did historically; a connection between Carey's father (the Chamberlain) and Shakespeare is contrived (the company Shakespeare later played in was called the Lord Chamberlain's Men); Green and Marlow behave badly--drink too much, speak heretically, get involved in espionage. If only her ability to write matched her ability to research...
Coming up: #s 34 and 35, books I listened to, rather than read!
Then there's the historical aspect. One reason I like reading history (and, by extension, historical novels) is to get a sense of how people and society in the past were different to us and similar. Chisholm doesn't have a very deft touch with this. For the most part, her characters act and think more or less like modern people, except when she clearly approaches one of her predesignated "see, people in the past were really different" teaching points, at which she becomes terrifically heavy handed in the application of the underlining pen.
In A Surfeit of Guns, Carey and his sergeant, Dodd, head up to Scotland to track down a shipment of guns. There's a little violence, a little sex, and a good deal of intrigue. There's a sort of mystery but, as with the earlier volumes, it's not really the sort of Conan Doyle mystery that you can figure out from the facts you are given by the writer. It's more or less process of elimination, as you know the guilty party must be someone you're introduced to formally; there's never any great subtlety to the stories or any complexity to the plots.
Her final Carey novel, A Plague of Angels, takes her two-man team of Carey and Dodd to London, where they are supposed to locate his brother but end up getting involved in a great deal of skullduggery. They also encounter several Elizabethan luminaries, including the writers William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Carey's own father, Henry Carey, and the politician Thomas Heneage. Now, I have a special loathing of historical novelists who feel they need to introduce their own "take" on historical characters that their audience believes itself very familiar with, especially attempts to make larger than life people seem like 'just regular folks' or to portray notables as bumptious or foolish. Carey's involvement with these characters comes off (to me) as contrived, rather as if the author has said "Gee, why don't we send the character to London! He can meet Shakespeare and Marlowe!"
All that said, she knows the personalities and their interactions. Greene delivers the diatribes against Shakespeare he did historically; a connection between Carey's father (the Chamberlain) and Shakespeare is contrived (the company Shakespeare later played in was called the Lord Chamberlain's Men); Green and Marlow behave badly--drink too much, speak heretically, get involved in espionage. If only her ability to write matched her ability to research...
Coming up: #s 34 and 35, books I listened to, rather than read!
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Date: 2008-12-05 05:04 pm (UTC)If you like pseudo-historical novels, and don't mind ancient, you could try Lauren Haney's Egyptian novels. They're not amazing, but they're nicely written, the mystery usually makes sense (yes, murder-mystery types), and I, at least, did get the sense that this was a LONG time ago. I like them for, if nothing else, the sense Haney gives the reader of day-to-day life in a small garrison town in ancient Egypt -- the heat, the diet, the life of the River, etc.
Good luck on getting to 50!
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Date: 2008-12-05 06:07 pm (UTC)Thanks for the recommendation! I also need to go back to a compilation of short story historical mysteries I got and read a while back. Some of those authors were quite good, and their books would be worth looking up.
I have no objection at all to ancient detectives; one of the best around, IMO, is Stephen Saylor's Gordianus the Finder. Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma I recall as being good too.
Saylor is someone who is accomplished at writing, character development, and using historical figures without giving the feeling of "Hey, lookit! I'm going to put ** in my story--see, ain't I cool?" I'm not sure why some people have so much trouble with it; I guess because they are trying to demonstrate that they're not overawed by the character and want to show that they're 'just folks', but in reality *are* overawed by the character and think that he/she is exceptional, so they go out of their way to highlight them.
Or maybe it's just because they're bad writers. :-)
Either way, thanks for the recc!