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cimoreneI've been thinking about Wake Up Dead Man some more even though I haven't gone and looked up the list of books, because I am not ready to purchase new ebooks yet, and that's what I'll have to do for the ones there I haven't read before.
Meanwhile though, I have been rereading some Agatha Christie. I am not exactly a giant Christie fan, but I have read most of Agatha Christie's works (and usually multiple times) because I like Golden Age mystery as a genre and my MIL was a superfan, so I have had convenient access to paperbacks of Christie's works.
And I realized with a start yesterday that while the setting and setup in Wake Up Dead Man is in some respects is EXTREMELY typical of Golden Age detective fiction, in another it's very very unusual - I don't think there are any famous, high-profile Golden Age mysteries based around the murder of a priest or CofE clergyman, actually.
There are quite a lot, especially the rural ones, where a clergyman and the rural church life plays a major role. But Josh Brolin's pirate rockstar priest in Wake Up Dead Man, Monsignor Wicks, is wholly different from the clergymen of Golden Age fiction. He is aimed directly at our contemporary society, obviously, and the reactionary aggrieved kyriarchy which only started evolving into its present form in the last few decades. But he very much resembles the charismatic and despotic patriarch victim at the center of so much Golden Age fiction - this stock character is often surrounded by a cast of his descendants and others who will inherit after his death (ie Harlan in Knives Out; Sir William in Gosford Park; Conway Jefferson in The Body in the Library; Simeon Lee in Hercule Poirot's Christmas) but businessmen also abound, with casts of characters made of their hangers-on, professional contacts and opponents, and employees (like Roger Ackroyd, Matthew Davenheim in The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim, Alistair Blunt in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe).
And I think this cast is mostly like one of these setups, a charismatic (but horrible) old man and a lot of people under his sway. The fact that they were all his followers is still unusual in the genre - the tropes overwhelmingly have the old patriarch being hated by the majority to maximize the suspects. You can, of course, find cases where the motive is thought to be inheritance but the rich man was on good terms with his family, but these aren't as iconic and I can't think of any off the top of my head. The later twist where we learn Wicks was threatening all the rest of the cast (except Martha and Samson) makes it fit much better, because it means they actually all did have a motive - a bit like a mystery where you find out the victim was blackmailing everybody in the second act. (And I'm pretty sure I've read that, but I can't name a story now.) (Now I'll have to try to poke back through the books I've read in search of ones that deal with blackmail and weird sects and groups, I guess.)
Meanwhile though, I have been rereading some Agatha Christie. I am not exactly a giant Christie fan, but I have read most of Agatha Christie's works (and usually multiple times) because I like Golden Age mystery as a genre and my MIL was a superfan, so I have had convenient access to paperbacks of Christie's works.
And I realized with a start yesterday that while the setting and setup in Wake Up Dead Man is in some respects is EXTREMELY typical of Golden Age detective fiction, in another it's very very unusual - I don't think there are any famous, high-profile Golden Age mysteries based around the murder of a priest or CofE clergyman, actually.
There are quite a lot, especially the rural ones, where a clergyman and the rural church life plays a major role. But Josh Brolin's pirate rockstar priest in Wake Up Dead Man, Monsignor Wicks, is wholly different from the clergymen of Golden Age fiction. He is aimed directly at our contemporary society, obviously, and the reactionary aggrieved kyriarchy which only started evolving into its present form in the last few decades. But he very much resembles the charismatic and despotic patriarch victim at the center of so much Golden Age fiction - this stock character is often surrounded by a cast of his descendants and others who will inherit after his death (ie Harlan in Knives Out; Sir William in Gosford Park; Conway Jefferson in The Body in the Library; Simeon Lee in Hercule Poirot's Christmas) but businessmen also abound, with casts of characters made of their hangers-on, professional contacts and opponents, and employees (like Roger Ackroyd, Matthew Davenheim in The Disappearance of Mr Davenheim, Alistair Blunt in One, Two, Buckle My Shoe).
And I think this cast is mostly like one of these setups, a charismatic (but horrible) old man and a lot of people under his sway. The fact that they were all his followers is still unusual in the genre - the tropes overwhelmingly have the old patriarch being hated by the majority to maximize the suspects. You can, of course, find cases where the motive is thought to be inheritance but the rich man was on good terms with his family, but these aren't as iconic and I can't think of any off the top of my head. The later twist where we learn Wicks was threatening all the rest of the cast (except Martha and Samson) makes it fit much better, because it means they actually all did have a motive - a bit like a mystery where you find out the victim was blackmailing everybody in the second act. (And I'm pretty sure I've read that, but I can't name a story now.) (Now I'll have to try to poke back through the books I've read in search of ones that deal with blackmail and weird sects and groups, I guess.)
