I didn't read quite as much as I meant to, but I did finish 'Excellent Intentions'. I should probably have started with 'The Murder of my Aunt' which the British Library Crime Classics series has also republished and which seems to have been Hull's best known book, as well as his first. 'Excellent Intentions matched the bottle of gin that I also bought last week though, and the two together made a particularly tempting combination.
If 'Excellent Intentions' is a good example of Hull's work 'The Murder of my Aunt' is something I can really look forward to reading. I truly enjoy the BL crime classics, they always have something appealing in terms of atmosphere and detail, and they're giving an increasingly thorough overview of their genre and period. I love the way that there's room for books/writers that don't take themselves particularly seriously in the collection (I'm particularly thinking of Alan Melville's 'Quick Curtain'), but what I part appreciate are books like this one.
'Excellent Intentions' is clever, and funny, and sly in equal measures. The murder victim is satisfyingly horrible, and a lengthy discussion on the finer points of stamp collecting and the detecting of forged stamps the sort of thing I consider the cherry on the cake of an author having a bit of fun with his readers.
'Excellent Intentions' is sort of a court room drama. We know who the victim is, and as the plot unfolds we find out through a series of testimonies, summings up, flash backs, and so on, what happened. We meet 4 potential suspects, but only find out at the end which one has been on trial, and even then there is a final twist.
It's clever enough to keep you guessing, but has sufficient clues along the way for the culprit to seem obvious enough when the reveal comes around. Hull's red herrings and sly humour are what makes the book for me though. I felt he was daring me to skip the stamp collecting details, knowing that I couldn't in case I missed a vital clue.
If production companies ever get tired of trying to reinvent Agatha Christie this would make a splendid adaptation as well - but that's almost certainly to much to hope for.
Such a tempting image! The ginger jars are beautiful - you hardly ever see them about nowadays. I find them very hard to resist.
ReplyDeleteI particularly like this pattern, and so far have 4. I would love to find a really big one (at a reasonable price) but don't fancy my chances on that. Like you say, you don't see nice ones that often.
DeleteThe book, but especially that gin looks wonderful. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, the gin is good, but I've finished the book...
DeleteI'll look out for all of these - the book, the gin, pretty ginger jars like those. (I have a couple of ginger jars which I don't use for storing ginger, but they are not as nice as yours.)
ReplyDeleteI am always a bit torn about TV adaptations of books: on the one hand, I spurn them because they are never as good as the book and they don't fit my mental pictures (e.g. Fosco in the recent Woman in White serialisation, no no no and where were the white mice?), on the other I generally end up peeking at at least one episode just out of curiosity, and for this reason I think that production companies should declare a moratorium on Christie, Austen, Dickens and Bronte and dare to be different.
Christie adaptations have been more or less entertaining, less recently with the efforts to update them, or whatever, for a contemporary audience, and I fell in love with Dorothy L. Sayers in the back of the Harriet Walter/Edward Petherbridge adaptation in the eighties. I remember a decent take on The Franchise Affair too. Less success with much loved classics. I gave up on The Woman in White after the first episode. On the other hand I keep remembering more TVs versions of golden age detective fiction which have been pretty decent. There's a mass of material to play with, and this one has such a collection of unlikely suspects you could have so much fun with it.
DeleteI love the ginger jars, I particularly like the blue and white ones so have picked them up the odd times I've seen them. They're not expensive, but not that common to find either. Probably a good thing as I've already got far to much junk around the place.