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III: Charlie Brooker, Screen Burn (London: Faber and Faber/Guardian Books, 2005)
A generous selection of Brooker's tv preview columns from The Guardian weekly Guide, for which the word caustic is insufficiently strong. Brooker mostly (p)reviews stuff he hates and rants against the stupidity of it all, including lots of programmes on relatively obscure satellite channels as well as the main terrestrial ones. What you won't find is his celebration of The Wire, although you can trace a disenchantment with 24 from approval to ridicule. There's a huge playfulness in the language, and coinage of new words - it reminded me frequently of Chris Morris in The Day Today or Brass Eye. Recommended, although you could no doubt trawl through the online archive as easily.
IV: Colin Dexter, Last Bus to Woodstock (1974)
I've never read any of the Morse novels (nor seen more than half of the tv adaptations), but I did spend a month watching a complete boxset of the books in a charity shop. Eight quid was a bargain - but decided against it until after they were sold. Last year I bought them new for about a tenner. This year I plan to read one a month.
So, heavy drinking, crossword-solving, Lancia-driving Chief Inspector Morse is down to solve the sexually related murder of a young girl, found in a pub car park. She and another girl were seen waiting for a bus, and then walking along the road to Woodstock, but the other person remains identified. Morse uses logic to identify a suspect (a middle-age professional living in north Oxford driving a red car), and the red herring is identified in due course just as the man in question comes forward. The only thing clear is that whilst he has done something, it is not the murder.
I don't think the novel has dated well, but I suspect it's a first novel and allowances need to be made. I've read the Dalziel and Pascoe novels of the period, and whilst Dalziel was hardly the new man, there was less apparent sexism and racism in them. Morse's fancying of suspects - and at one point the victim - didn't really work for me, and there's some timely racism about bus drivers. It feels more than just the character's feelings, but then Dexter drifts between characters' thoughts so it isn't overly focalised.
I did, eventually, guess who done it, and I don't think Dexter plays fair, having to do something that Rankin occasionally resorted to - telling us that a detective has asked a witness a question, but withheld the question and answer, and even perhaps the subject, from us. I know we need suspense, but this is too much I AM KEEPING YOU IN SUSPENSE. The truth comes out through a letter and then a Morse/Lewis explanatory conversation. I hope they improve, but I won't read the next until February
A generous selection of Brooker's tv preview columns from The Guardian weekly Guide, for which the word caustic is insufficiently strong. Brooker mostly (p)reviews stuff he hates and rants against the stupidity of it all, including lots of programmes on relatively obscure satellite channels as well as the main terrestrial ones. What you won't find is his celebration of The Wire, although you can trace a disenchantment with 24 from approval to ridicule. There's a huge playfulness in the language, and coinage of new words - it reminded me frequently of Chris Morris in The Day Today or Brass Eye. Recommended, although you could no doubt trawl through the online archive as easily.
IV: Colin Dexter, Last Bus to Woodstock (1974)
I've never read any of the Morse novels (nor seen more than half of the tv adaptations), but I did spend a month watching a complete boxset of the books in a charity shop. Eight quid was a bargain - but decided against it until after they were sold. Last year I bought them new for about a tenner. This year I plan to read one a month.
So, heavy drinking, crossword-solving, Lancia-driving Chief Inspector Morse is down to solve the sexually related murder of a young girl, found in a pub car park. She and another girl were seen waiting for a bus, and then walking along the road to Woodstock, but the other person remains identified. Morse uses logic to identify a suspect (a middle-age professional living in north Oxford driving a red car), and the red herring is identified in due course just as the man in question comes forward. The only thing clear is that whilst he has done something, it is not the murder.
I don't think the novel has dated well, but I suspect it's a first novel and allowances need to be made. I've read the Dalziel and Pascoe novels of the period, and whilst Dalziel was hardly the new man, there was less apparent sexism and racism in them. Morse's fancying of suspects - and at one point the victim - didn't really work for me, and there's some timely racism about bus drivers. It feels more than just the character's feelings, but then Dexter drifts between characters' thoughts so it isn't overly focalised.
I did, eventually, guess who done it, and I don't think Dexter plays fair, having to do something that Rankin occasionally resorted to - telling us that a detective has asked a witness a question, but withheld the question and answer, and even perhaps the subject, from us. I know we need suspense, but this is too much I AM KEEPING YOU IN SUSPENSE. The truth comes out through a letter and then a Morse/Lewis explanatory conversation. I hope they improve, but I won't read the next until February
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