My Weekly Book

A Trouble of Fools - Linda Barnes

One of the big headlines from my 50 Book Challenge year so far is my wholesale adoption of a genre that we might call “hardboiled female American PI”. OK, what I really mean to say is that I’ve read a few books by Sue Grafton, and now this enjoyable offering from Linda Barnes, and that I really, really mean to come to terms with Sara Paretsky’s Vic Warshawski in the next couple of months.

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I’ve enjoyed the Sue Graftons a lot and that’s what led to a recommendation from Mr Random to read this. It’s superficially lighthearted, humorous and easy to read with a heroine who has a full life outsider her PI-ing and a superb, irreverent, I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude (in contrast to her somewhat more serious, driven and uptight contemporaries). Having said that, the story also has plenty of meat and atmosphere and most of the elements for the denouement are in place right from the start. There are some great, off-the-wall characters, lots of local Boston colour and a plot twist I didn’t see coming. The heroine is forced to face up to the consequences of her actions in a painful scene following the book’s climax. The plot event that allows the story to resolve itself made me wince a little – a touch of the deus ex machina who drops from heaven (or rises from hell, possibly) to resolve everything neatly, but it wasn’t enough to spoil a very engaging and entertaining book.

Having said that I liked this book, and feeling that I will definitely want to read The Snake Tattoo, the next in this series, I was struck by some powerful similarities between this and the Grafton oeuvre. I’m not accusing either author of borrowing from the other, that’s just boring and a waste of time. But I am very interested in the common elements that may define this genre. Both Kinsey Millhone and Carlotta Carlyle are ex-cops who couldn’t quite buckle down to the discipline for one reason or another and so ended up going solo. Both of these women are fiercely independent, to the degree where each will make her own life uncomfortable rather than surrender an iota of that independence. Both are prone to carrying guns, both practically live in a small, battered, foreign car full of all kinds of useful things that could really help a girl out of a tight spot. Each of them is a dab hand with a lock-pick, each still has a few useful police contacts and indeed each knows a nice, steady, well-built but slightly boring police officer that apparently wants more than just friendship. (Admittedly Kinsey’s is married and she has, so far, been sensible enough to stay away from him. But I’m only on the third book, OK, so don’t take this as gospel.) Both women have a taste for dangerous men who are rather too heavily implicated in their cases for comfort. Both can turn a hand to ‘regular’ work to help them out when times are lean in the detecting game - Kinsey does insurance investigations while Carlotta drives a cab. Each woman is a little too prone to become emotionally invested in her cases.

One scene in particular really stood out. In C is for Corpse Kinsey is attending a posh function in a floaty tunic top and a pair of trousers that have seen better days. On arrival she feels severely under-dressed. She ditches the trousers, converts the floaty top into a dress with the help of some accessories she finds on the back seat of her car – and a pair of abandoned heels which she finds underneath a seat. In this book, Carlotta uses *exactly the same* props and method to convert herself into a hooker and carry out a sort-of undercover surveillance. Well, as undercover as you can get when you’re six-foot one before the heels, with hair described as “beggaring adjectives like flaming” and dressed as a hooker with your bra left behind in the glove compartment. See what I meant about don’t-give-a-fuck? I can’t see Kinsey doing this. But the scene had me shaking my head in disbelief because it was so familiar the second time round. Best to re-state that I’m not accusing either author of borrowing from the other one. But it was a very odd experience. And perhaps it does demonstrate the perils of reading too extensively in the same genre over too short a period of time…

Some links:

• Brief Wikipedia entry with good bibliography
• Thrilling Detective: Carlotta Carlyle
• Track this book on Bookcrossing.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 31st, 2006 at 10:13 am and is filed under 2006 reading challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.