Next Read! Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons

For one thing, I think it is about time that I actually look into the history of gothic and detective literature.  I'm still all for just reading for pure enjoyment, but I'm getting curious about the history and significance of these novels.

So my next read is The Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons and is one of the Northanger Novels.  It was written before The Mysteries of the Udolpho and is more in line with what classic gothic literature is than what Radcliffe wrote.

All I'm hoping for is less poetry.

So you have your proper innocent young thing, running from her incestuous uncle.

Along with masses of bad writing and a story that moves like a racehorse--at least by all accounts, and the typical gothic heroine who faints and cries all the time.  Radcliffe was different in making her heroines more proactive and reasonable and making all seemingly supernatural stuff actually explainable.  This is going to be gothic horror as it normally was and my first foray into the Dan Brown of the age.  I can't wait.

"Rather odd to enter a drawing room carrying a large luminous cod"

Having a hard time with The Man Who Knew Too Much.  Maybe it's that Hitchcock made two movies with that title and I hadn't bothered to look up anything else. I mean, Hitchcock, right? That has to have some good horridness to it.

So I'm expecting something like this...

With some of this:

And maybe a bit of this:

In other words, I was not prepared for the series of quiet short stories that the book really is. So my reaction was more like this:

These are short and unhorrid stories surrounding a man who can manage to deduce the real culprit, but because of various reasons, the killer is never brought to any kind of justice.  So the stories, while they have a 'detective' putting the clues together, are not fully satisfying.  They have a tendency to put me to sleep at night instead of keeping me awake ravenously turning pages--or hitting the page turn button as the case may be.

There are no real inquiries into the crimes, no tension, and no danger.  Just a telling of a puzzle and an answer to a question that is solved, but never rectified.  I like the idea of the politics and the reasons why the killer often gets away in order to keep worse consequences from occurring due to the politics, but could there be the occasional hint of suspense and some amount of justice along with our commentary on how justice isn't really just?  Please?

What I will give Chesterton is some great lines.  The title of this post is one of them.  Here are a few more gems:

Harold March was the sort of man who knows everything about politics, and nothing about politicians.

"I think I can manage to be a sort of fourth-rate burglar."

Such people seldom reject anything nonsensical, for they are always seeking for something new.

He had a talent for appearing when he was not wanted and a talent for disappearing when he was wanted, especially when he was wanted by the police.

I think I will eventually read all the stories, but more on my own time, not for the blog.  No OHMYGOD moments. So, I'm going to move on to other things with more gore and terror and suspense.

So, here is my updated list of reading.

I owe you a back of book blurb for Leavenworth Case!

Which I will get to later. Spent morning moving shelving and tables for a local rummage charity sale and I'm going to Drunken Shakespeare tonight.  Tomorrow I do homework.  So after all the excuses, I'll give you the fun back of book blurb for The Leavenworth Case.

"'Well,' said he, 'this is unexpected, but not wholly unwelcome.'"

Done. Though it took me a bit longer than expected with the real life stuff.  I know who the murderer is, what all the Terrible Secrets are, and that I like Ebenezer Gryce.

Especially how he has a tendency to not actually look at anyone and therefore emotes to buttons, doorknobs, and random flies.

But he's really paying full attention and missing nothing.

He's a quiet character, not given to the dramatics and opium habits of Sherlock Holmes, which might be why Gryce is forgotten, but he is entirely up to the trickery. I am hoping the gentleman narrator is not the narrator for all the Gryce books. In fact I hope the gentleman narrator never shows up again.

But, when I think about it, part of the fun was watching Gryce out think and continually shock and annoy the narrator.

So maybe he wasn't so bad...

Maybe if it was in third person the narrator--who wouldn't be the narrator then and I would be forced to remember his name--wouldn't have annoyed me so much. But honestly, there may be some good points to chivalry being dead.

                                                 ...................Or maybe not.

"I laid my hand upon her heart. It was pulseless as a stone."

Hi. As usual, weekends are the most busy for me.

But I'm back and reading. And....

Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod!

The one witness, the girl who has been missing for weeks, just as they find her, is now dead. And she burned all the papers that would be useful! Everything has hinged on this girl and now....

At least Gryce is back from his rheumatism. I can't come up with any more amusing ways to tell you how stupid I find this narrator.

"that is because you are a gentleman. Well, it has its disadvantages"

I like Gryce. He's devious and practical. I don't like the narrator, Mr. Raymond. He needs to be hit over the head many times.

 He refuses to do "ungentlemanly" things that will actually solve the case, like looking at addresses on personal letters or listening to private conversations. Gentleman seems to be synonymous with Willfully Stupid.

Like this conversation (partly paraphrased and edited for space)
Gryce--The murderer may be one of the women.
Raymond-- I cannot listen to it; it is too horrible.
Gryce-- Women murder people too. Read the criminal records.
Raymond--I do not care for the criminal records. All the criminal records in the world would not make me believe.

I'm waiting for later in the book where he says global warming has nothing to do with the carbon dioxide we are dumping into the atmosphere and that the world was created by intelligent design. Because reality is ungentlemanly.

"Death by means of a pistol shot from the hand of some person unknown"

That's the verdict of the inquest. It took them 2 days and a lot of testimony along with the votes of jurors to state the obvious.

It's generally said that if a murder isn't solved in the first 48 hours that the chances of it being solved go way down. Must have been really easy to get away with murder at that time.

The Leavenworth Case Back of Book Blurb!

"'For the most unselfish of reasons,' I urged. She slowly shook her head. 'You think so.'"

And Bam! Eleanor just told it to the guy trying to be the knight in shining armor! Woo!

Of course he doesn't listen, which is good, since then we wouldn't have a story. Also, she is being REALLY STUPID. Yeah. So the girl has secrets. And at the inquest and to the detectives she seems to purposely act weird. Then she is surprised when she is accused of murder. Not just surprised, but offended that her acting suspiciously would then make people suspicious of her.

So to prove to the narrator that she is innocent without having to divulge the Terrible Secrets, she takes him up to the room where the corpse has been laid out for the past 2 days and climbs all over it and kisses it, because how could she do that if she had killed him?

My question is: HOW COULD SHE DO THAT AT ALL?!?
He's been dead for 2 days! Do you know what that looks like?
Me neither. So I looked it up.

• After 24 hours:
• 15} The body is now the temperature of the surrounding environment
  16} In males, the semen dies
  17} The head and neck are now a greenish-blue color
  18} The greenish-blue color continues to spread to the rest of the body
  19} There is the strong smell of rotting meat
  20} The face of the person is essentially no longer recognizable

• After 3 days:
• 21} The gases in the body tissues form large blisters on the skin
  22} The whole body begins to bloat and swell grotesquely. This process is speeded up if victim is in a hot environment, or in water
  23} Fluids leak from the mouth, nose, eyes, ears and rectum and urinary opening

SHE KISSES THIS? EW! EW! EW!

I don't know if she is or is not the murderer, but I know she is really sick. And stupid.

                        And I'm going to go be ill now.

                                                  And keep reading.

The Classics Club Classics Spin

I sort of messed up on this.

I thought you had to start the book right away. But after reading other people's comments I learned that you just have to finish by July 7th. So I can keep reading The Leavenworth Case and the Spin book is the NEXT book. Yeah, I'm a bit slow sometimes...

I really want to join, but I can't exactly go with the random number thing anymore. So, I'm stealing this idea from Behold the Stars and leaving it to reader's choice.

Books I Dread

1.      Castle of Wolfenback- Eliza Parsons

2.      The Necromancer- Ludwig Flammenberg

3.      Horrid Mysteries- Marquis de Grosse

4.      The Mysterious Warning- Eliza Parsons

5.      The Italian- Ann Radcliffe

6.      The Midnight Bell- Francis Lathom

7.      Clermont, A Tale- Regina Maria Roche

8.      Orphan of the Rhine- Eleanor Sleath

Books that Slay

9.      Mystery of Cloomber- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

10.  The Circular Staircase- Mary Roberts Rinehart

11.  The Man Who Knew Too Much- G.K. Chesterton

12.  The Red Thumb Mark- R. Austin Freeman

13.  Dead Man’s Money- J.S. Fletcher

14.  The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective- C.L. Pirkis

15.  The Woman In Black- E.C. Bentley

First commenter tells me which book I gasp over next.

You've heard of Penny Dreadfuls, but have you read them?

Me neither. But I found some! Mysteries of London by G.W.M. Reynolds.

It's on the list. I'm beside myself. I can barely breathe I'm so excited. This is the trash lit of the Victorian Era!!! With all the lurid, sensational, gross, murderous prose you can get!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!

This is as big as finding the Northanger Horrid Novel Collection!!!!

I have nothing more to say but I'm too excited to stop typing because I want you all to understand how Utterly. Freaking. Awesome!!!!!

"The certainty that the murderer, whoever he was, had not left the house"

We've already had a woman faint! The girl the narrator falls in love with. You know she is worthy of his love because she faints at the sight of the dead man and because she is beautiful.

But she might also be evil and be the murderer.

Nah, after all she is beautiful.

Otherwise, we are still at the inquest, where they have pulled a bunch of men off the street and are listening to evidence while the body is still upstairs cooling. No suspects or anything, just random guys and a coroner talking. The evidence is for them, not the detective, so are the random guys going to solve this thing? In Bleak House they do the same thing the day after Nemo overdoses, so maybe they are deciding if it is a murder? Like the shot to the back of the head isn't a clue. No idea how this works.

Oh, and there is a missing girl and the murderer probably never left the house.

Now if we could just get past the inquest.

"a ghastly wound in the back of the cranium"

Bam! Page one! Dead guy!

I haven't gotten far and I have a busy weekend ahead-- maybe I should have waited for Monday... But I didn't and the horrid comes quickly. No slow starts this time.

And with a start like that, it might be hard for me to do anything else this weekend even if I am supposed to be doing other productive things... Maybe I can sneak my book in and do some reading on the sly.

I wasn't! I was just... uh... okay, I'll get back to work now.

In the meantime

What I've been doing, besides homework, is discover a lot of other blogs on reading. I linked the ones I'm now following to the side. It seems there are a lot of readers of old books!! Woo!!

I'm looking forward to reading Leavenworth Case, but waiting until tomorrow. From Breadcrumb Reads I learned about the Bout of Books. I don't think I'll be doing it this time around having already made my plans and I'm not putting off Anna Katherine Green. Nope. Tomorrow I'm sitting down and having my own bout of book. But I'm telling you all about it in case you want to sign up. I think I might do the one in August.

The other thing is some of the other bloggers had a picture along the side of their blogs that is Which Austen Heroine Are You? I had to take it. And I FAILED!!!!!!!

I got this:

What is wrong with this picture? It's not Catherine! I didn't try to skew the answers or anything. But seriously, I have no idea how that one ended up like that. I'll have to retake it.

Okay. Back to homework for me so that I can guiltlessly read about murder tomorrow.

Next Read!--Starting May 9th!

The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green.

I'd have more to say on this book but most of the stuff I can find on it is more about how Anna Katherine Green is the mother of mysteries and how she started this series with Detective Ebenezer Gryce 9 years before Sherlock Holmes. Another unsung woman author. Etc.

Not that I'm against lamenting the unfairness of unsung authors, but... Tell me about the book! So here is the synopsis that I know about.


Big millionaire Horatio Leavenworth is murdered in his library. The case is attended by Ebenezer Gryce with the help of a junior law partner. There are family members with motives, including daughters--one of whom said junior law partner falls in love with (of course!)

And that is what I know. Not much for a back of book blurb, is it? So I'll have to write a better one at the end. Remind me, please.

Anyway, here is where you find it.
Amazon--Free!
Barnes and Noble--Free!
Project Gutenberg--Free!
GirleBooks--Free!

So on May 9th I start reading and we'll find out how Gryce stacks up to Holmes.

Other Weirdos! Woo! (An Introduction to the Classics Club Challenge)

Trolling about for discussions on books--as usual-- I followed a link to another link to another link and wound up here-- The Classics Club. They have a little challenge where you read a list of classic books-- a list of your own making-- within a certain amount of time and blog about them. And they are un-fusty about what constitutes a classic. (I had to make sure of this before I decided to join, since most of the books I like to read tend not to land on the official classics lists.) Their whole purpose is to get discussions going about classic books and my whole purpose is to get discussions going about horrid books and mysteries. Wee!!

In order to join I must put a list of at least 50 books I intend to read here and give a date to have them finished by. I'm going to go with 3 years. It gives me a lot of room and I can always add more books. Here is my list. I make no promises that this is the order I will read things in.

Northanger Horrid Novel Collection

1.      Castle of Wolfenback- Eliza Parsons

2.      The Necromancer- Ludwig Flammenberg

3.      Horrid Mysteries- Marquis de Grosse

4.      The Mysterious Warning- Eliza Parsons

5.      The Italian- Ann Radcliffe

6.      The Midnight Bell- Francis Lathom

7.      Clermont, A Tale- Regina Maria Roche

8.      Orphan of the Rhine- Eleanor Sleath

More Gothic-ish Sorts

9.      Phantom of the Opera- Gaston Leroux

10.  The Monk, A Romance- Matthew Lewis

11.  The Phantom Ship- Frederick Marryat

12.  The King in Yellow- Robert Chambers

13.  The Lancashire Witches, A Romance of Pendle Forest- William Harrison Ainsworth

14.  Catherine: A Story- William Makepeace Thackeray

15.  The Cloister and the Hearth- Charles Reade

16.  The Castle of Otranto- Horace Walpole

17.  Lady Audley’s Secret- Mary Elizabeth Braddon

18.  East Lynne- Ellen Wood

19.  Moonstone- Wilkie Collins

20.  The Haunted Hotel-Wilkie Collins

21.  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall- Anne Brontë

22.  Black Oxen- Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

23.  The Wind In the Rosebush and Other Stories of the Supernatural- Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

24.  A New England Nun and Other Stories- Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

25.  Melmoth the Wanderer- Charles Maturin

26.  Dracula- Bram Stoker

27.  Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman- Mary Wollstonecraft

28.  Vathek- William Beckford

29.  House of the Seven Gables- Nathaniel Hawthorne

30.  The Parasite- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

UPDATE!!
Varney the Vampire Or the Feast of Blood- Thomas Preskett Prest
Wagner the Wehr-Wolf- George W.M. Reynolds
Mysteries of London- George W.M. Reynolds

Mysteries

31.  The Woman In Black- E.C. Bentley

32.  Mystery of Cloomber- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

33.  The Man in Lower Ten- Mary Roberts Rinehart

34.  The Circular Staircase- Mary Roberts Rinehart

35.  The Bat- Avery Hopwood and Mary Roberts Rinehart

36.  Lady Molly of Scotland Yard- Baroness Orczy

37.  The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective- C.L. Pirkis

38.  The Avalanche: A Mystery- Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

39.  Monsieur Lecoq- Émile Gaboriau

40.  Dead Man’s Money- J.S. Fletcher

41.  The Paradise Mystery- J.S. Fletcher

42.  The Man Who Knew Too Much- G.K. Chesterton

43.  The Innocence of Father Brown- G.K. Chesterton

44.  The Red Thumb Mark- R. Austin Freeman

45.  The Mystery of 31 New Inn- R. Austin Freeman

46.  John Thorndyke’s Cases- R. Austin Freeman

47.  The Leavenworth Case- Anna Katharine Green

48.  That Affair Next Door- Anna Katharine Green

49.  The Circular Study- Anna Katharine Green

50.  Mystery of the Hasty Arrow- Anna Katharine Green

"the retrospect of all the dangers and misfortunes they had each encountered"

That sad feeling when you've finished the book.

I spent all day reading, to the point where all I've had to eat is an ENTIRE BOX of girl scout cookies and some popcorn. I know who lives, who dies, who gets married, and who is whose child. I know that the heroine fainted 14 times throughout the novel (and that half). I know what is behind the black veil. I enjoyed this book so so much.

Sorry, Pooh, we can't. We have more books to read.

And I'll leave you with the last line of the book, because it is awesome.
"And, if the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it--the effort, however humble, has not been in vain, nor is the writer unrewarded."

THE END

"where her last interview with Valencourt, before her departure from Tholouse, had taken place"

Which is interesting because on exactly another spot they said goodbye too. She's back at her late aunt's mansion and is mooning around thinking of Valencourt.

The book has gotten really exciting in volume 4 and I'm reading as fast as I can and then we come to full stop as she wanders gardens and weeps over the many places she saw him. I just want to yell, 'Shut up and get back to the cool shit!' Like where Ludovico disappeared to when he spent the night in the haunted chamber! Or what sainted St. Aubert had to do with the mysteriously dead marchioness! Or wtf is up with the crazy nun! Pleeeeeeeeease!

"the Chevalier's extravagance has brought him twice into the prisons of Paris"

OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD!

Fainting fit 11, but that isn't why I'm saying ohmygod. Something happened that I never expected.

While Emily was fighting for her life, trapped in torture chambers, kidnapped, and held prisoner, and making a daring escape, Valencourt has been gambling away all his money, womanizing, and getting himself arrested!

I never saw this coming. Never, never, never.

"the dread of superior beauty urged her to prolong Blanche's seclusion"

Alas! I've had an upcropping of real life to distract me from adventures. It isn't done yet! Tomorrow I score a 5k road race for a charity. Runners are so persnickety about their times and personal bests and all that and they wouldn't appreciate that I was reading rather than keeping track of their times.

So we've left Emily mid-escape (I know!!!! WTF?) and we still don't know what is behind the black curtain that terrified her so much.

I don't know what happened, where Emily is, or if she got away, because suddenly we are back in France at the chateau that creeped the locals out where the sainted St. Aubert (who should never work in child placement services) died. This place.

There we meet the new owner's family. He is a count. His daughter is named Blanche.
Blanche is a beautiful young woman who loves nature.

She has lived a secluded life (in a convent put there because her stepmother was jealous of her beauty) and is therefore all goodness and light and such.

And she has a vain and stupid woman (her stepmother) who doesn't like her and takes every chance to make her miserable.

Oh and Blanche writes poetry, so we get treated to stanza on stanza about a butterfly.

Wait a minute.... All this sounds really familiar. Like a variation of another character in the story...

Not sure where Emily and her little band of escapees fit in yet. Hope she is okay. And at least while running, she can't stop to write poetry!... I hope. Maybe lack of poetry opportunities is why Radcliffe put Blanche in.