The Riverside Villas Murder by Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis – author of the iconic Lucky Jim, one of The All-TIME 100 Novels http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/all/ and more than ten other masterpieces 10 out of 10
The Riverside Villas Murder by Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis – author of the iconic Lucky Jim, one of The All-TIME 100 Novels http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/all/ and more than ten other masterpieces
10 out of 10
This reader has been enthused by the art of glorious Kingsley Amis, and this is the twelfth novel that he is enjoying, one that proves that this is a Master of the Glasperlenspiel aka The Glass Bead Game, able to write romantic comedies, satires and, as this case proves, a detective book – in the short introduction there is an excellent quote 'like any of his books, guaranteed to please' – and notwithstanding the serious theme, for we are dealing with a murder, as the title makes plain, there are exhilarating, mirthful passages.
The protagonist is fourteen years old Peter Furneaux, who is like any other teenager preoccupied with sex and there are some very interesting, changing references to the subject, suggesting that he might be exploring some homosexual intimacies with at least one of his pals, though it is somewhat uncertain what the interactions involve, the young boy is not gay – though we have learned from great books like Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/06/girl-woman-other-by-bernardine-evaristo.html that gender is fluid and maybe the idea of gender is itself a fraud – he does not like his friends in that sense, it is just that so far, they had not had access to the other sex to copulate, they resort to masturbation and meet each other for sexual satisfaction of some indeterminate kind…
Things will change when his neighbor, attractive Mrs. Ada Trevelyan, a married woman ‘in her late twenties or thereabouts’, approaches the teenager and offers very valuable advice for his attempt to get closer to Daphne Hodgson (who is one year older than Peter), Mrs. Trevelyan explains the thinking, the hesitations, confusion that are specific and how the boy needs to cut through all that jungle and be patient, show determination and know his own will – words to that effect, I think and hope
The married woman goes further, showing a special interest in the fourteen years old neighbor, inviting him to dance at this festivity – where colonel Manton would draw the conclusions based on his decades old experience and probably using the Thin Slicing Effect explained in the quintessential Blink – the Power of Thinking Without Thinking by one of the most famous and essential thinkers of the present, Malcolm Gladwell http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/05/blink-power-of-thinking-without.html - and a little later, she wants him at her house for tea, which is in fact a disguise for a little sex party…
Therefore, the investigation into the crime has this very special ‘aside’, which could be for many the main attraction, adding to the sometimes austere plot of an ‘ordinary crime story’, and this ingredient, together with the marvelous way that Kingsley Amis has with words, the unequaled sense of humor, the turn of the phrase, splendid insight into human nature – even when that nature is just fourteen years old –make the reading a great joy…
Early on, a skeleton is stolen from the local museum – we are about a dozen miles away from London, and this little place has just one room in the local library for the museum – together with some coins…some are left, and among them a more valuable item, which prompts the question of what was all this about, the under signed has only guessed the most simple of facts, that the coins have been absconded just to distract the attention and send the detectives on the wrong path, Boris Karloff was the objective
Colonel Manton enters the stage and he is the equivalent of Hercules Poirot here, a rather outré personage, with decades of experience, showed valor in the war, when severely wounded, near collapse, he still lead his men into battle with courage and resilience, now he is assisted by a woman servant he does not like, but who had managed to learn the…Morse code, which the master uses to transmit various commands, saving time and energy apparently, in one hilarious moment, he offers Constable Barrett, the one that would help in the incoming investigation…champagne, something the latter had never tasted, and for which was ‘quite as prepared as for being asked to have a gold brick or a trip on a submarine’
At the dance party where Mrs. Trevelyan makes her move on Peter, there is a distinct, annoying episode that involves Chris Inman, a man who has Peter’s size and allure, Inman comes to Captain Furneaux, the teenager’s father, and implies that he knows very disturbing, embarrassing or worse things from the past and then he moves on, insults more at the festivity and eventually gets punched and knocked down by Mr. Hodgson, only to be killed a short time later, thus making those who had been verbally assaulted in public suspects, since they clearly had had some reason to pay back the aggressive fellow.
Before departing for other realms, Chris Inman comes into the home of Peter, who is the one to see the man expire and would be involved in solving the crime, indeed, he will play a crucial role, often unaware that he is used in the narrative and the colonel has the intention to use him as a pawn on his chess table – using the standards and norms of today, the investigator would be unable to demand so much from the boy, he would be sentenced for abuse, since he puts Peter to the task of plunging into the water, to play the corpse for him, acting as a flesh model for the late Inman, on the other hand though, there is a clear admission that rules had been broken by the limits extant then, in order to get to the killer and make him/her/they get to extremes that are again inadmissible for our liberal views…
‘Peter worried about going to Mrs. Trevelyan with inoperative leg pointing at the ceiling (aka erection), if, if, if (it is here six times in all) occasion arrived at all...what he had imagined and what happened resembled each other as much as a fox- terrier and a rhinoceros...imagined drifting down river in a small boat, in reality it was like leading a cavalry charge under artillery barrage...nor quite equally like, for the horse would be underneath you…Point Counterpoint and Nine Tailors are mentioned and to being with Mrs. Trevelyan, he could face arctic weather’…this reader has just finished Take A Girl Like You http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/06/take-girl-like-you-by-kingsley-amis-one.html and will continue to read Kingsley Amis for it makes you want to do this:
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
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