marycrawford (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marycrawford) wrote2004-03-19 03:35 pm
marycrawford) wrote2004-03-19 03:35 pm
Minor epiphany amid much rain and cold
Okay, so I'm not actually in the rain, but we just moved to another part of the building and the heaters aren't working. Also, the doors that open automatically don't open, and those are heavy to move by hand.
But here's the part about the epiphany, which could also be titled Why I Love Google, Reason #1542.
I have this battered paperback called 'De Fatale Contrabas' (The Fatal..um. Bass? Contrabass? The musical instrument. You know) that I got from an aunt or somebody.
It's a very British story, a drily funny mystery set in a small English village. Someone gets his head smashed in with his own bass/contrabass/whatever the thing is called, but the story revolves as much around the odd villagers as about the mystery. Details are hazy, but I particularly remember the dykes who keep goats and cats - I think this was the first time I encountered an old married dyke couple in fiction. They call their cats names that end with 'pus' - Oedipus, Platypus and so on - which turns out to be an important plot point.
The main character, who tells the story in first-person and solves the mystery, is an equally odd duck - a retired mathematician who moved to the village for unexplained reasons and who spends his time working on his magnum opus about 'de gespiraliseerde derde macht' (spiralized third power?), IIRC.
I read this book a couple of times when I was twelve or so and quite liked it.
Then I read it again when I was fifteen, after I had been completely and obsessively immersed in Sherlock Holmes for a few months. And I realized to my utter surprise and delight that the main character in 'De Fatale Contrabas' is Moriarty.
The clues are there - his odd, reptilian way of moving his head, delicate references to the reasons why he had to leave London, hints of a criminal past. But it's never really explained, it's not the big denouement of the novel or anything like that. It's almost like an in-joke.
Remembering this paperback, I got curious - who wrote it, was I out to lunch about the Holmesian connection? And so I set out to Google.
The English title of the book is Dwelly Lane or Death in Dwelly Lane, and the author is Frank Morley - who was the brother of Christopher Morley, a well-known Sherlockian. Apparently this was his only published novel.
Sigh. I love Google. And now I want to reread De Fatale Contrabas.
But here's the part about the epiphany, which could also be titled Why I Love Google, Reason #1542.
I have this battered paperback called 'De Fatale Contrabas' (The Fatal..um. Bass? Contrabass? The musical instrument. You know) that I got from an aunt or somebody.
It's a very British story, a drily funny mystery set in a small English village. Someone gets his head smashed in with his own bass/contrabass/whatever the thing is called, but the story revolves as much around the odd villagers as about the mystery. Details are hazy, but I particularly remember the dykes who keep goats and cats - I think this was the first time I encountered an old married dyke couple in fiction. They call their cats names that end with 'pus' - Oedipus, Platypus and so on - which turns out to be an important plot point.
The main character, who tells the story in first-person and solves the mystery, is an equally odd duck - a retired mathematician who moved to the village for unexplained reasons and who spends his time working on his magnum opus about 'de gespiraliseerde derde macht' (spiralized third power?), IIRC.
I read this book a couple of times when I was twelve or so and quite liked it.
Then I read it again when I was fifteen, after I had been completely and obsessively immersed in Sherlock Holmes for a few months. And I realized to my utter surprise and delight that the main character in 'De Fatale Contrabas' is Moriarty.
The clues are there - his odd, reptilian way of moving his head, delicate references to the reasons why he had to leave London, hints of a criminal past. But it's never really explained, it's not the big denouement of the novel or anything like that. It's almost like an in-joke.
Remembering this paperback, I got curious - who wrote it, was I out to lunch about the Holmesian connection? And so I set out to Google.
The English title of the book is Dwelly Lane or Death in Dwelly Lane, and the author is Frank Morley - who was the brother of Christopher Morley, a well-known Sherlockian. Apparently this was his only published novel.
Sigh. I love Google. And now I want to reread De Fatale Contrabas.