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truepennyI realized this morning as I was brushing my teeth that Golden Age detective fiction would make ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT Jacobean plays.
(And revenge tragedies are also, in an odd way, almost murder mysteries.)
The deaths are grotesque and imaginative (I've been rereading John Dickson Carr's Henry Merrivale books, and trust me, Jacobean audiences would have loved this shit); the books always have a layer of meta (Carr and Crispin in particular); detectives love both acting and stage-managing (really, starting with Sherlock Holmes, but flowering emphatically in the 30s and 40s--and Ngaio Marsh named her hero for an Elizabethan actor, which is a clue I don't know why I didn't pick up on before), and I can easily imagine Burbage stomping up and down the stage and forcing, by the sheer pressure of his theatricality, the poor benighted murderer to give himself away.
It's perfect.
And now I want to write one.
(And revenge tragedies are also, in an odd way, almost murder mysteries.)
The deaths are grotesque and imaginative (I've been rereading John Dickson Carr's Henry Merrivale books, and trust me, Jacobean audiences would have loved this shit); the books always have a layer of meta (Carr and Crispin in particular); detectives love both acting and stage-managing (really, starting with Sherlock Holmes, but flowering emphatically in the 30s and 40s--and Ngaio Marsh named her hero for an Elizabethan actor, which is a clue I don't know why I didn't pick up on before), and I can easily imagine Burbage stomping up and down the stage and forcing, by the sheer pressure of his theatricality, the poor benighted murderer to give himself away.
It's perfect.
And now I want to write one.
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Date: 2011-06-22 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 10:59 pm (UTC)Fourthed!
Date: 2011-06-23 05:33 am (UTC)Re: Fourthed!
Date: 2011-06-23 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 05:35 pm (UTC)If Angela Carter can write "John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore" . . .
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Date: 2011-06-22 06:01 pm (UTC)MKK
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Date: 2011-06-22 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 06:31 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 2011-06-22 11:02 pm (UTC)Carr isn't a favorite, but I find myself rereading all of Crispin every few years. And still laughing unstoppably at a certain point in Glimpses of the Moon, even though I know what's going to happen (and oh, the setup for that, throughout the book...).
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Date: 2011-06-22 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-23 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-23 01:44 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2011-06-23 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-23 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-23 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-11 04:53 am (UTC)