sabagrey’s Comments (group member since Jul 20, 2025)

sabagrey’s comments from the Reading the Detectives group.

Re: GR blocking member-to-member communication (messages)

In another group, moderators have sent out a message to the group, inviting members to leave their e-mail address in their reply - so that there is still some way to find individual contacts to other members, to stay in touch with them.

Could we do this here, too?

Reading The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey. She had left the "classical" mystery behind at that stage - the development can be nicely followed throughout her Alan Grant series. So my criteria for judging mysteries don't really apply, but I like her writing very much nonetheless.

Judy wrote: "Thanks for confirming you don't think we had anything about Stanwood asking Ruth for help, Ninie. Ironic that she started helping him later on.."

It's a while since I read this, so maybe I'm wrong ... as far as I remember, he did not ask Ruth for help. She says somewhere that she has found his book just recently and was immediately enthused and inspired to write a review. But we learn - from Robert - that in fact she has owned the book for years, and never read it? reviewed it? at a time when it would have been vitally important to Stanwood. So here's her little white lie, created, I guess, out of vanity: she cannot admit that she has simply ignored a masterpiece for years. I think that is the "tragic" element here: not an intentional rejection, but a mere oversight due to vanity and thoughtlessness.

great! I'll certainly read along.

Sandy wrote: "Craftyhj wrote: "I wonder though if it is because the authors themselves found the death penalty distasteful?"

I have often thought that was the reason the authors dispatched their murderers befor..."

... or because they thought their readers would not like the idea, especially when it was a villain in which the authors had invested some characterisation effort to make him/her interesting.

I had to have a look ... this Foyles does not look like the Foyles I've known (many years ago) - when it was famous for the most chaos a bookstore can get itself into. terrific!

Judy wrote: "I think I'll go for a Ngaio Marsh as it seems a long time since we read any of her books. How about Death and the Dancing Footman, first published in 1941."

It's also in vol. 4 of the Inspector Alleyn Collection (each has four titles at 12 € as e-book)

oh dear ... GR just muddled up my comment on the subject of fiction - literature - humanities vs. science (including a potshot at Freud) etc. I take it as a sign that I went way out of our harmless discussion of a mystery ;-), so it's best it was not posted.

Judy wrote: "Yes, I agree there could be more about them being authors - there's quite a lot at the start but a bit less as the book goes on."

Yes, they are authors - but authors of what? As far as I understand it, only Ruth writes fiction. Her brothers publish their research in medicine and psychology, as every researcher does, and their father is also a scholar. I think Lorac exaggerates a bit the creativity and intellectuality of the family - with a narrative purpose. (should we not take this discussion to the spoiler thread?)

Judy wrote: "I've read about 70% of this one now - enjoying it but I'm being distracted from the story by the various mouth-watering descriptions of meals! I am slightly wondering if the author was on a diet wh..."

There was ... is? ... a fashion in culinary mysteries. It could be that MONTALBAN MANUEL VASQUEZ started it with his weird Barcelona-based detective Pepe Carvalho who enjoys his Catalan cuisine. (hot tip! but, I think, not well known by English-speaking readers?)

Susan in NC wrote: "But I thought it was brilliant the way it all came together in the end."

the end was a bit too hasty and abrupt for me ... I'd have loved to see more sleuthing on site.

culture & period wise, I also love how the feeling of being fenced in by foreign occupation transpires. It's what I heard from my parents ... and it gets even closer than that: at that time, my father worked for the railway, and was station superintendent at St. Anton.

I'm reading E.C.R. Lorac's
... the one with my hometown on the cover, although I doubt whether the story will take us exactly there.

I'm not far in, but already I pay my respect to the author for getting the setting (Lech am Arlberg) so pitch-perfect right. She was there, and not just for a day! Much has changed since, but some things don't ... for example the "beautiful mild-eyed cows, café au lait coloured" - the race is called Brown Swiss, they are still bred in the Western Alps, and they are, in my opinion, the prettiest cows in the world. ;-)

So, on with the mystery ... I do have problems to keep track of the characters: a group of 16 is a challenge.

Jackie wrote: "preliminaries? why, what is happening?"

... major disturbance in the Internet today; Amazon Web Services were down for quite a while; with them, lots of apps and platforms and services ... everything restored, everything up and running again - but it should remind us how much we depend on very few hubs, servers, and companies.

ah well ... these were only the preliminaries to some major f***-up, of Amazon Web Services in general, affecting LOTS of platforms and services.

... I'll go offline for the day, will do me some good ...
... and meditate a bit about our frightening dependency on big corporations, hardware, software, and electricity.

I think it's just another nest of bugs they have unintentionally stepped into. There's so much interconnection between everything on GR: books-users-discussions-reviews-friends-authors-groups-notifications-messages etc. At some level of complexity one bug, as much as an attempt to fix it, can have unforeseen repercussions.

now just imagine for a moment some amazon guy has the glorious idea to unleash AI into this chaos.

Jackie wrote: "Suddenly, after not doing so for awhile, Goodreads is giving me notifications when there are new posts in threads I am subscribed to.

but not all of them, just some of them!"

I get random notifications of new posts in threads I am not reading or subscribing ... very odd.

I am halfway into The Man in the Queue (Inspector Alan Grant, #1): An Abridged Mystery of Murder, Intrigue, Investigation by Josephine Tey. I like her style very much, with a straight plot as becomes a novella/short novel, with lots of humour and tongue-in-cheek descriptions. And with another hybrid detective between professional and gentleman sleuth in the style of Roderick Alleyn.

they say that the Frankfurt Book Fair goes back to the 16th century, when it was part of the general trade fair. So marketing books began almost as soon as books were printed.

But did they have public readings back then? I wonder. - It certainly did not go to today's excesses of commercialisation.

I will quote in full and comment:
Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "Many years ago I lived in Switzerland where every man serves part of the year in the army. (or Civil Defense when older) it took a bit of getting used to seeing uniformed soldiers wandering around with guns (mainly at the train stations)

I read this as a direct comparison: soldiers with guns in Switzerland - soldiers with guns in the US. So I felt compelled to point out the difference between Swiss soldiers simply travelling to their barracks for their regular service turn and units of US soldiers deployed for military action.

There was never any trouble - even murders were rare in Switzerland in those days.

Of course there was no trouble - see above. Swiss military presence has nothing to do with crime prevention. As in any other Western democratic nation, the military is not (and must not be, by constitution or whatever they call it) involved in policing.

Lets hope for the same for the States.."

I take your meaning as being: soldiers in the streets are ok to keep the peace. ... which is an erroneous conclusion, based on what I explained above. Military in the streets of their own country - except as individual citizens, on parade, or for disaster control - is not okay, never, nowhere. (nor are, BTW, paramilitary forces such as ICE.) Domestic crime prevention and riot control are not their domain. There's a good reason why police and military are kept strictly apart in their tasks in every functioning democracy - the risk of the military taking power (on their own, as in a putsch, or used by a dictatorial government, as in the US) is too great.

I strongly suspect that basically, we do agree. I admit that I may be over-sensitive on the subject, as I come across too many reactions of USAmericans who still do not grasp what is going on in their country, and go on merrily and thoughtlessly trivialising their new regime.

Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "it took a bit of getting used to seeing uniformed soldiers wandering around with guns (mainly at the train stations) There was never any trouble - even murders were rare in Switzerland in those days.

Lets hope for the same for the States."

sorry NO, sorry NO, sorry NO. ... I don't know where to begin.

The armed, uniformed Swiss soldier going to his training has NOTHING to do with military deployed against their own population. Also, they are not the reason for the low murder rate. (which is all the more amazing as Swiss soldiers keep their equipment at home between trainings).

Do not confound the military terror that you are witnessing in the US with the defence army of a neutral, democratic state. Please.

The day Switzerland - or my home country, neighbouring Austria - deploy the army to fight protesters, immigrants, - in short, our people - our democracies will have come to an end. (and believe me, Austria has a history in that regard). I don't say it can't happen - the extreme right is gaining in popularity here too - but sensible people would not believe for one minute that it has anything to do with crime prevention and citizens' protection.