Status Updates From The Big Bow Mystery

"Haunted rooms--or rooms that ought to be haunted if the ghosts of those murdered in them had any self-respect--are supposed to fetch a lower rent in the market." This book cracks me up.

"The two men were always overwhelmingly cordial when they met, in order to disguise their mutual detestation. When people really like each other, they make no concealment of their mutual contempt." New favorite quote.

I can’t recall a book that has gone so far off topic through the middle. If you picked it up and opened somewhere near the middle and read you’d think it was some kind of overly written treatise on social ills in the late 19th century. It’s as dull as dish water and so painfully repetitive. I’m only plodding on because it’s short and I want to get to the locked room solution. But, my lord…

Once you get used to the fact that it was written in weekly installments and has quite a lot of unnecessary language, it’s a fun read.

RIP Israel Zangwill, you would have LOVED What a Way to Go! (1964) starring Shirley MacLaine