Biblio Files (takingadayoff) > Recent Status Updates

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dnf

Turns out the book club will be discussing this book next MONTH, not next week, as I had thought. Well, that's my cue, I am bailing out. Maybe I'll pick it up again next month. But probably not.

I am rapidly losing interest. There's finally a murder, but the characters we are supposed to care about (a charming con man and a young aristocratic widow) have so much contempt for the victim who is Italian and is working for a Balkan government they also think little of. The book also sneers at the assassinated king of the Balkan country because he married a non-noble foreigner for love. Just wait until 1936!

The story is chugging along, and it's pretty engaging, aside from the gratuitous ethnic stereotypes and slurs. They are jarring. I wonder why this was selected for the book club? It seems like an odd pick. It's the first in the Superintendent Battle series. I confess, I don't remember Battle at all, but it turns out there are five books with him as the detective.

The story got off to a quick start and it's already pleasantly complicated. Two con men bump into each other after some years. They're in Africa, one of the men is leading a vacation tour of English people and the other is preparing to head to South Africa for an unspecified opportunity. He tells the tour guide of a lucrative job he had to turn down but that it's still available if his friend wants it. He does.

Here's an Agatha Christie I don't think I have read, and the local online book club is discussing it on Monday, so I'll read it this weekend. That doesn't mean I'll make it to the book club, but who knows. The copyright is 1925, so I don't even care if the plot is any good, there should be a lot of details about life in 1925 that will make it worthwhile.

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