Started: 12 feb 2013
Finished:16 feb 2013
Pages: 192
It's funny, but although I wouldn't normally think of something written in the mid 70s as being a " period piece"' this one feels that way. Not so much because its so much of its time, as because it isn't. The respect shown by the " little people" for the peer who hits them with his car, the bereaved middle class wife who's mostly shocked because she's now going to have to earn her own living, the seamy gambling club frequented by the actress who's no better than she should be....I honestly thought this one was written in the 1950s or 60s, and might have placed it earlier if the protaganist weren't an actor in a television series.
Interesting...did this seem old-fashioned when it was published? Or was the daily texture of ordinary life so much different from now, so recently? I suspect the latter, actually. I was a kid in the 70s, but I remember our neighbours initially considering it shocking that my Mom was mowing the lawn after my parents separated in 1974. Mowing was for males in suburbia. And don't get me started on her struggle to get credit in her own name.
I sometimes think that the most disconcerting time travel might be a time trip to an era earlier in our own lives.
But that's kind of bye the bye. What about this book? As a mystery its unusual, as it features both a professional and an amateur detective. And although they don't work together, precisely, they are both essential to the solution of the mystery. The twist in this one is that the actor-detective has an obsession with Sherlock Holmes, lives on Baker Street, and plays Holmes on TV.
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