Skip to main content

Full Dark House--notes

Police department:  A violent place in which to discover a purpose. . . a good place to forge a friendship

Four thousand people killed in blackout accidents in the first months of WWII . . . No weather forecasts issued in Britain--Germans attack on clear nights.  Spies would inform them . . . Marks and company 84 Charing Cross Road bookstore . . . Theatre follows a script, the outside world full of missed lines, cues, entrances . . .  London scuffed by the dead hand of globalization . . . Our job is to make sure they don't get used to murder . . . Natural singers (Janis Joplin, for example) are "destructive, dangerous," while technical singers "never bared their souls."  . . . Sciatic notch -- notch on pelvis which can be used to determine sex of skelteton. . . cicatrized--form a scar after an injury . . . Valiant as the name of a flashlight . . . "the closer you are to death, the more attached you become to life."  . . . The book finishes with Bryant's song of love to the city:  "The city is my theatre. I never want to leave it."

Wonderful ending.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin . . . finished

 Follows Sadie and Sam (Mazer) from childhood to mid-thirties when both are feeling old and a bit out of it in the gaming world.  Characters are well-rounded, develop throughout the novel in interesting way.  Plot is involved but sensible.  Not a single, "Oh, come on!" moment.  The book could have been faster paced. Odd, since the main topic is video games which are not for their speed of engagement and Gabrielle Zevin clearly knows her video games. Recommended by Michael Connelly in an interview.  He also has Bosch pick up the book in his novel, Resurrection Walk, as Bosch tails a possible witness to a crime as she moves through a bookstore. Sadie and Sam do not get together at the end, which is good.   Marx killed by homophobic nutcase who really wants to kill Sam, but Sam isn't there. Marx is father of Sadie's child. 
Post a Comment
Read more

The Franchise Affair, Josephine Tey--opening pages

Blair, a lawyer in Milford, gets a strange call.  His practice is wills and similar--nothing criminal.  A woman tells him that Scotland Yard is accusing her of abduction and implores him to come out to help her, even if later on he passes the case to someone else.  The woman says she has called him because he is "her type," meaning respectable and conservative.  He agrees.
Post a Comment
Read more