** Georgette Heyer – Envious Casca
*** David Wingrove – Chung Kuo: The Middle Kingdom
*** Soseki Natsume- Botchan

As I understand it, the modern American detective novel arose in part in reaction to all those British puzzle-mysteries (by Conan Doyle, Christie, etc), in which the murder was done in some ingenious way not revealed until the very end, when we learn that it was a rare poisonous snake, a trained rat sent down a convenient drainpipe, or the butler. How Dashiell Hammett would have hated Envious Casca then, in which the murder is not only a locked-room mystery but takes place at an English country manor, peopled by an eccentric cast of etc etc. The writing is good and the characters are fairly interesting, but the mystery is partly predictable (it’s not that hard to figure out, though the character twist is satisfying) and partly gimmicky (the way it’s done is kind of silly, and the clue that gives it away is frankly lame). The book whiled away the time but I probably could have found a better way to occupy myself.

Chung Kuo is an epic science fiction novel, set about 200 years in the future, when the Chinese rule an earth spanned by a single massive city, in which 40 billion people live stacked many levels deep. The rulers hope to prevent change and progress, but a dissatisfied faction agitates for change and starts a rebellion. I love a good epic, and luckily there are seven more books after this one. It took a while to get into the book, and to start being able to remember all the different characters and the bits and pieces of mandarin thrown in, but once I got into it I enjoyed the rest of the book and all the different story threads. One compelling thing about the book is that neither side is unambiguously good or bad. The rebels represent freedom and progress, but also violence and cruelty, while the rulers represent oppression and stasis, as well as culture and philosophy. In temperament, I side with the rulers, but then I remind myself that they basically want to control what everyone does and says and stifle all innovation. So that keeps it interesting.

Apparently Botchan is a popular favorite in Japan, about the misadventures of a somewhat self-centered young man who becomes a teacher at a country school. At first I thought he was just a thoughtless oaf, but he turns out to have good basic principles, and he sticks to them admirably. The story is small and light and the book passes quickly, but it’s a good time with some good values thrown in. I can see why it’s popular.