Tag: Julian Symons

Review – The Progress of a Crime

Posted March 1, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Progress of a Crime by Julian SymonsThe Progress of a Crime, Julian Symons

Julian Symons was, I think, a good writer — just one I don’t get along with very well. He plays well with perspective and voice, and he can certainly put together a story — which is not an impression another repeat British Library Crime Classic author I detest gives me (John Dickson Carr, sorry folks) — but I just don’t enjoy his books. This is the third book of his I’ve read, and I think I appreciate them less with each successive book I read. It doesn’t matter that I know he did his research, or even that I’m curious about the true story that germinated the idea for him. I just… don’t like the book.

Which I hate to say, because I’ve enjoyed most of my tour into Golden Age crime fiction to one degree or another (E.C.R. Lorac’s books very much; Gil North’s, not at all)… but Symons’ work just doesn’t work for me. I’m always feeling like I picked up a smooth dry-looking stone and found a craggy wormy maggoty mess under it. It just leaves me feeling icky. There’s no characters you can really unambiguously enjoy, either because they’re fun caricatures or because they’re people you can root for: everything’s just complicated and messy, and the ending feels like a relief just because it’s over with (though it’s not a relief because it ends on a massive downer).

Not the era/genre of crime fiction that tends to end with the world set to rights, clearly!

Rating: 1/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted November 5, 2020 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Oops, it’s late! Okay, real quick, here we go, my WWW Wednesday!

Cover of The Progress of a Crime by Julian SymonsWhat are you currently reading?

Since it’s about to be 5th November (Bonfire Night, in the UK), I decided to pick up the recently reissued The Progress of a Crime, by Julian Symons. It’s in the British Library Crime Classics series, so it was pretty much an auto-buy; I’ve found Symons’ books very readable, though I don’t always find them pleasant — there’s something about the characters he centres that just feels too clever by half, and just generally unpleasant (and that’s not something that has to be the case with crime fiction! there are plenty with pleasant leads).

There are a few other books on the go, but this one is the top of the pile at the moment.

Cover of This is Kind of an Epic Love Story by Kacen CallenderWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was This is Kind of An Epic Love Story, by Kacen Callender. Very fun as a short read, though very YA in level, meaning it slipped by just a little too easily. That said, the portrayal of sign language and the way Callender avoids over-explaining the sign (or just treating it as “translation” and putting it in full English sentences) is pretty cool.

Cover of Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. CoreyWhat will you be reading next?

I intend to get properly stuck into my reread of James S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes, for SciFi Month! I also want to start rereading Shards of Honor, by Lois McMaster Bujold; I’d like to crack on with reading the Vorkosigan series in honour of SciFi Month, too. Finally, I need to read Evie and the Pack-Horse Librarians, for the Clear Your Shit Readathon.

As ever, it’s also entirely possible I’ll head off in some other weird and wonderful direction, too.

What are you currently reading?

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Review – The Belting Inheritance

Posted September 9, 2020 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Belting Inheritance by Julian SymonsThe Belting Inheritance, Julian Symons

I quite liked a previous book by Julian Symons, and this had quite a similar feel: more literary and polished than some of the other crime novels in the British Library Crime Classics series, which just attempt to be good stories. And another experience has led me to conclude that, well… I don’t really like his work, on balance: I find it has a certain self-conscious feel, a knowledge of its own cleverness, that I find somewhat offputting.

That’s more the case with this one that with The Colour of Murder: the narrator is an older man recounting something that happened when he was just barely an adult, describing his naive young stumblings-about and pretentiousness with an older, more temperate eye… and in the meantime showcasing how very clever he was in some ways (like wordplay and random intuitions to dash across to France). The tone felt fussy and slow as a consequence.

The whole family are pretty unpleasant here, as is traditional, and I didn’t really get majorly involved in the mystery: parts of how it would work out were much more obvious than I think the author would’ve liked! It’s just not that clever, and something about that smarmy narrator (both his young and adult selves) just gets up my nose. Bah.

As a piece of writing, I think it’s well done, pretty well-plotted and structured and so on. The neat sketches of the characters are mostly unkind, but do conjure up people quite vividly… But overall, meh for me.

Rating: 3/5

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WWW Wednesday

Posted September 2, 2020 by Nicky in General / 6 Comments

It’s Wednesday again! So here’s the usual check-in. You can go to Taking On A World Of Words to chat with everyone else who has posted what they’re reading right now!

Cover of Mudlarking by Lara MaiklamWhat are you currently reading?​

Fiction: The Belting Inheritance, by Julian Symons. It’s heavy going compared to a lot of the other British Library Crime Classics; it’s very consciously literally, and it has a rather stodgy narrator (an older man narrating events of his youth, groan).

Non-fiction: I’m back to reading Afua Hirsch’s Brit(ish), having got my ereader all set up again after the replacement, and also got back to the front of the queue from the library. I’m finding it hard going, not because of the subject matter, but just something about the writing. I’ve never done that well with memoir, and that’s largely what this is, though it does also discuss society-wide issues.

I’m also reading Lara Maiklem’s Mudlarking, which is a very easy read. I love microhistories, so perhaps it’s not surprising that this exploration of mudlarking and the things you can find while doing it is working for me.

Cover of Unfit For Purpose by Adam HartWhat have you recently finished reading?​

The last thing I finished was Adam Hart’s Unfit for Purpose, which I found a fairly obvious exploration of how human beings are ill-adapted to our modern environment because we evolved for a wholly different one. It never really dug into the issues enough to satisfy me.

Cover of Drift Wood by Marie BrennanWhat will you be reading next?

Most likely I will get back to work on The Grace of Kings, which I’ve been neglecting a bit too long. I have a whole shelf-full of books I’m partway through (or have been partway through at some point in the last… year-ish) that I want to pick back up, but there’s also a chance I’ll pick Marie Brennan’s Driftwood first.

What are you currently reading?

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