This is spring break week in my graduate courses, so I thought I’d be able to slow down a bit (since of course there’s still class work to catch up on), and do a little blogging.
But lo, I have a translation job to do which is just large enough to maybe fit into the time I’ll have.
But blast it, I’ve been meaning to write this short review, and I’ll write it.
The Inspector Skelgill mysteries, set in England’s Lake District, are another in the currently fashionable sub-genre of the Difficult Detective. The Difficult Detective is brilliant but hard to get along with. Sherlock Holmes was the prototypical Difficult Detective, but Inspector Morse and TV’s “House” (who was indeed based on Holmes) are popular iterations.
Inspector Skelgill is a police detective who might be called “good in the field” — quite literally, since he’s an outdoorsman who resents any minute spent indoors. His favorite spare time activities are fishing on the lakes (he rows his own boat) and “fell running” — that is, running in the mountains. As a result he’s generally running a calorie deficit, which leads him to constantly steal other people’s food — “Are you going to finish those chips?” He also almost never picks up a check. He appear to be moderate on the autism spectrum, a little callous to the feelings of either crime victims, criminals, or his colleagues. He also generally ignores the orders of his superiors, but his success in solving cases secures his job for him — a little past the point of credibility.
The best thing about this series (I’ve read the first three, Murder in Adland, Murder on the Edge, and Murder in School) is the descriptions of the Lake District scenery, lovingly portrayed.
The worst thing, all in all, is Skelgill himself. I got kind of tired of his act after a while, although in the third book he showed some signs of moderating his selfishness. Still, I’ll probably give him a rest for a while.
The usual cautions for language, violence, and adult themes, though nothing excessive by contemporary standards.
