Reading this--which was very interesting!--has brought home to me just how much I don't re-read these books for the mysteries. *g* By which I just mean, I think I seldom give the actual mystery plots much direct thought, so the analysis of aspects of the mystery kept making me say "Huh! Yeah!" Having been prompted to actually think about it, I realize that normally, the Well Meaning Person (hiding evidence because they wrongly think someone they love is suspected) can kind of bug me, but here it didn't. Perhaps because Wolfe and Archie never seemed truly bugged about it? It was an obstacle, but they didn't spend time resenting it (possibly because, once it was apparent Barstow wasn't the target, they were hot on the true scent, which kept their morale up).
Agreed on the awesomeness of all the past cases (and past conflicts which keep playing out). It took me a while to truly notice how many of these get salted in, I think because I didn't read the books in order (my first was Some Buried Caesar, a gift from a pal for my birthday when I was around 12), so I couldn't really separate the true references from the made-up ones. (And you're right, the unseen first case referenced in the Wimsey books is about emeralds.)
He should *of course* not have used it? Even after the snake?!
Now that you mention it, Wolfe really doesn't seem to take the snake personally. This feels different from later times when he and Archie are menaced, or even when the plant rooms are attacked in what might be seen as a similar stab to the heart of his home. Here, the attack doesn't provide ammunition for him to righteously rise up and smite the offender or anything.
Partly, I wonder if it's because of his clear (if subtle) utter disapproval of Kimball Sr.'s actions vis-a-vis the child. Kimball is so matter-of-fact about it that it's horrifying, the way he just mentions in passing that the boy was on the floor with his toys and some of the blood got on the toys, so anyway then I left and had a drink and blah blah blah. Wolfe, however, gets a clear picture of what happened--as Wolfe says later, the image obviously clear in his mind, "the infant son whom he deserted sitting on the floor in a pool of his mother's blood."
Wolfe does have the occasional tendency to get murderers to kill themselves, or to make sure they're killed by someone else--justice being done when the law wouldn't quite be able, and/or to avoid bad accompanying consequences. So I can see him going lightly on Manuel specifically until the "right" death has taken place. And then once Manuel was finished killing his father, Wolfe could still hand over the evidence about Barstow and take care of him that way (if Manuel didn't kill himself first, which I think Wolfe was pushing for).
However, now that I've said that, I'm also thinking...
or if he would have been too outraged by the snake-attack as an affront to his dignity and the violation of his home, to his very DESK, and just flat taken Manuel down and turned him over to the cops.
...now I'm not entirely sure, even if he had seemed to take the snake more personally, that Wolfe Roused would indeed hand the affronter over to the cops as the final blow. Perhaps a tacit personal affront is actually part of the trigger that makes Wolfe keep the cops out of it until he's engineered a more dramatic conclusion. We don't see his final call to Manuel directly, so it's not clear how hard he brought his will and force to bear on causing the suicide, but his reference to telling Manuel "that he was surrounded, on the earth and above the earth" makes it very likely that it was his intention. And of course he knew that Manuel wouldn't kill himself without being able to take his father with him.
Argh, there's still so much I want to talk about! I will have to come back later. Darn books, so full of discussion fodder, grumble, harrumph.
If I have more to say on a topic that seems to belong to the previous thread (e.g. the ersatz marriage), should I add it there? Or here?
no subject
Agreed on the awesomeness of all the past cases (and past conflicts which keep playing out). It took me a while to truly notice how many of these get salted in, I think because I didn't read the books in order (my first was Some Buried Caesar, a gift from a pal for my birthday when I was around 12), so I couldn't really separate the true references from the made-up ones. (And you're right, the unseen first case referenced in the Wimsey books is about emeralds.)
He should *of course* not have used it? Even after the snake?!
Now that you mention it, Wolfe really doesn't seem to take the snake personally. This feels different from later times when he and Archie are menaced, or even when the plant rooms are attacked in what might be seen as a similar stab to the heart of his home. Here, the attack doesn't provide ammunition for him to righteously rise up and smite the offender or anything.
Partly, I wonder if it's because of his clear (if subtle) utter disapproval of Kimball Sr.'s actions vis-a-vis the child. Kimball is so matter-of-fact about it that it's horrifying, the way he just mentions in passing that the boy was on the floor with his toys and some of the blood got on the toys, so anyway then I left and had a drink and blah blah blah. Wolfe, however, gets a clear picture of what happened--as Wolfe says later, the image obviously clear in his mind, "the infant son whom he deserted sitting on the floor in a pool of his mother's blood."
Wolfe does have the occasional tendency to get murderers to kill themselves, or to make sure they're killed by someone else--justice being done when the law wouldn't quite be able, and/or to avoid bad accompanying consequences. So I can see him going lightly on Manuel specifically until the "right" death has taken place. And then once Manuel was finished killing his father, Wolfe could still hand over the evidence about Barstow and take care of him that way (if Manuel didn't kill himself first, which I think Wolfe was pushing for).
However, now that I've said that, I'm also thinking...
or if he would have been too outraged by the snake-attack as an affront to his dignity and the violation of his home, to his very DESK, and just flat taken Manuel down and turned him over to the cops.
...now I'm not entirely sure, even if he had seemed to take the snake more personally, that Wolfe Roused would indeed hand the affronter over to the cops as the final blow. Perhaps a tacit personal affront is actually part of the trigger that makes Wolfe keep the cops out of it until he's engineered a more dramatic conclusion. We don't see his final call to Manuel directly, so it's not clear how hard he brought his will and force to bear on causing the suicide, but his reference to telling Manuel "that he was surrounded, on the earth and above the earth" makes it very likely that it was his intention. And of course he knew that Manuel wouldn't kill himself without being able to take his father with him.
Argh, there's still so much I want to talk about! I will have to come back later. Darn books, so full of discussion fodder, grumble, harrumph.
If I have more to say on a topic that seems to belong to the previous thread (e.g. the ersatz marriage), should I add it there? Or here?