What I've Read

I just finished Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth. A big thanks to friendofthejabberwock for recommending it. I enjoyed it very much and got hooked several times. It seems like it might be a regshoe kind of book because it involves a girls' school at the turn of the century. It's 600+ pages so it's taken me about about six weeks, picking up and putting down, to get through it. I tried the audiobook version but I got about 2 minutes into it and noped out. American female voices are really, really not my thing. Here's a summary:

The novel is set during two time periods: 1902 and present day.

In 1902 readers are introduced to Clara and Flo, students living in Rhode Island and attending Brookhants School for Girls. They are completely infatuated with each other. They also share a love for Mary MacLane and a memoir she wrote, to the point where they create a secret club called The Plain Bad Heroine Society. The two meet an untimely death in a nearby orchard, the site of their club meetings and trysts, stung to death by eastern yellowjackets. Their deaths are not the last in the school, which closes five years later. Three more people died in the intervening years. As a result, the school is believed to be both haunted and cursed.

In the modern day, the abandoned school is now the site of a film production, based on a book detailing Brookhants' history. Celebrities Harper Harper and Audrey Wells have been cast as Flo and Clara, respectively. They travel out to the school with the book's author, Merritt Emmons, and the rest of the film's cast and crew, but soon discover that the school's curse may actually exist.

All of Agatha: One Two Buckle My Shoe

I am still in 1940 with One Two Buckle My Shoe (aka Poirot goes to the dentist).

I really liked this one, more than I was expecting. I think from a pure plotting standpoint, it's rather well done. Poirot's dentist is murdered on the day of his appointment (after his appointment) and there's the timing and going up and coming down of patients and public reasons and private reasons and false identities and I think there are maybe 1 or 2 too many characters. It was tough to keep them all straight in my head, but nevertheless, a good little story. I wish I'd been able to find a print copy (or audiobook copy) but I couldn't so I read it on archive.org, which is my least favourite way of reading (on computer) and I didn't want to spend money to buy it, but if it were in a used bookstore or something, I might pick up a copy to examine it more closely (dissect it, if you will). Here's the summary:

The novel features both the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and Chief Inspector Japp. This is Japp's final novel appearance. Soon after he visits his dentist, Poirot is investigating the death of his dentist. More people are dead, and the investigation widens, as Poirot slowly finds his way to the true stories behind the murders.

Next up: Evil Under the Sun, which is a fave of mine.