Another Long Walk In The Indiana Heat (to Sheriff), Not Fitting In (Still), Leftovers, How Not To Find A Wife

 Yeah, it was an hour walking from work to the Sheriff for my 90 check-in, letting the local enforcement that I am still alive and where I am living. Such a dangerous person, I am not sure it really means much - I could have been blowing trains with T.E. Lawrence for all anyone knew. The heat advisory continues.

I fixed dinner when I got home - steamed pork with the intention of feeding CC - she had company, so I did not go. She was supposed to show up; no sign of her at 9:21 PM.

Thinking she might come over, I napped. I got up around 6:30, debated on just sleeping through the night, and chose to get up.

I worked on two other posts and then started on this one.

Nothing done on "Three-Way Split" is why I chose to stay awake.

The leftovers.

This is a subject that has always fascinated me: Archaeologists   May Have Finally Solved The Mystery Of What Happened To Roanoke (Harlan Ellison had a short story based on this mystery, but I cannot recall its title. Like all of Ellison, it is worth reading.)

I listened to Michael K. Vaugh's 12 Classics You MUST Read! while working on another post. I think it is worth sharing. However, I admit to reading everything recommended except for The Epic of Gilgamesh (but I never finished Thucydides), and I agree with Mr. Vaughn's opinions.

There is one Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey novels I never finished, The Five Red Herrings. Having read Martin Edwards' On the Trail of The Five Red Herrings, A Sayers Novel That Stands Apart, I may go back and give it another try.

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote The Five Red Herrings in 1930, at the height of the Golden Age of detective fiction. Yet the book novel (published at the start of the following year and originally known in the United States as Suspicious Characters) stands apart from her other mysteries featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. This is because she deliberately set out to write ‘a pure puzzle story’. Sayers admitted to her publisher, Victor Gollancz, that she’d been provoked ‘by a lot of reviewers’ of her previous novel, Strong Poison, ‘who observed the identity of the murderer was obvious from the start (as indeed it is also in Unnatural Death and The Documents in the Case)…but if people really want to play ‘spot the murderer’, I don’t mind obliging them – for once!’

For all her flair as a crime writer, Sayers was not particularly interested in the whodunit. As she said to Gollancz, ‘Personally, I feel that it is only when the identity of the murderer is obvious that the reader can really concentrate on the question (much the most interesting) How did he do it?’  This remains today, as it was at the time, a minority view, but it helps to explain why Sayers’ novels are so distinctive. And it has to be said that, judged as a whodunit, The Five Red Herrings is hardly a match for Agatha Christie’s twistiest mysteries. The novel’s real distinction lies in its evocation of place.

The settings of Sayers’ best books—the advertising agency in Murder Must Advertise, the Fens in The Nine Tailors, and the Oxford women’s college in Gaudy Night—are a major and enduring strength of her work. And even if there’s a certain lack of excitement in the puzzle plot of The Five Red Herrings, which focuses on the minutiae of train timetables as relentlessly as any of the alibi mysteries concocted by her Detection Club colleague Freeman Wills Crofts, her evocation of Galloway in the south west of Scotland offers ample compensation.

The secret of her success in capturing the spirit of the place lies in her meticulous attention to detail. Her rural community is infinitely more lifelike than the ‘Mayhem Parva’ type of English village which featured so often in Golden Age novels. Right from the start, we’re left in no doubt that Sayers is writing about a recognisable artists’ colony. As she says in a prefatory note: ‘All the places are real places…and all the landscapes are correct, except that I have run up a few new houses here and there’. An attractive and lavishly detailed map of the area helps readers to follow the action.

This came through today in my email, Legislative Ban on the UOC: A Path to Reconciliation of the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine. More damage wrought by Putin.

For those interested in the philosophy of William James: William James Studies.

And when a person might think Indiana could not get any stranger, here is a story from Richmond straight out of James M. Cain: Indiana man poisoned wife’s Coca-Cola so he could marry her daughter: prosecutors.

DM wrote me that he is tired of politics - well, tired of hearing Trump, for certain. I am trying to spend less time with that and my writing. Now, if I could keep from napping.

My submissions get repaid in rejections:

Thank you for sending us "No Ordinary Word." We appreciate the chance to read it. Unfortunately, this piece isn't the right fit for us. If you wish to submit again, please wait until one month has passed.

Thanks again for submitting, Samuel, and we wish you the best in finding a home for this elsewhere.

Sincerely,

The Editors

Pithead Chapel

***

Thank you for sending us "Problem Solving". We are honored by your choice to entrust us with reading your work.

Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your piece at this time. Due to a high volume of submissions, we must often decline examples of promising work.

Thank you again for your submission. We at Blue Earth Review wish you the best of luck with finding a home for "Problem Solving"!

Sincerely,

Jamen Darling,

Fiction Editor

Blue Earth Review

So it goes.

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