Dawn ,'Beneath You'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Get Lord Peter and you get Bunter and the Dowager Duchess. There's no bad there.
I was thinking about Dorothy Sayers when we were talking earlier, and I think it would have been great to have read Sayers at 12, except that I would have started comparing every man to Lord Peter earlier.
So I was just thinking about Agatha Christie and rereading some Perry Mason and mysteries, and in the old stories, people do things like distract the hotel desk clerk and then surreptitiously check the register where people have signed in.
Which is completely irrelevant today, what with computers. What other old standbys of mysteries are useless these days?
Hell, even in the left canon there are non bleak choices. Tent of Miracles. Or if that has too much reality, Dona Flora and her two husbands. And Amado has to have enough heft!
Also, talking of magical realism how about the Palm Wine Drinkard! Been a long time since I read it, so don't know if it is depressing - aside from being about a drunk who ends up in the land of the dead. I actually don't remember the details, but remember laughing a lot. Should read it again.
Anything with phonebooths, Dana. Jim Rockford spent half of his working life in one, and now?
What other old standbys of mysteries are useless these days?
Most methods of travelling under a false name (hotels, airplanes at least). All kinds of things related to phones, what with cell phones.
Yeah, Paul Drake's operative's always had to find a phone booth to call in. So did Archie Goodwin.
In the Perry Mason books, they're always hopping on planes at a minute's notice.
Pretty much anything where the plot hinges on two people in different places not knowing what each other are doing. They can call or text each other now.
And finding information: wikipedia and google have solved a lot of problems, but complicated mystery plotting.
How many hotels still hang up the old-fashioned keys behind the desk?
I've stayed in one, but it's a late 19th century resort restoration. They had clawfoot tubs, and carpeting that's older than I am.