I Love... Whodunnits

Not this Who, but close. Very, very close. Via. 

OK, here's something you should know about me if you're ever going to watch a movie, TV show, or read a book with me ever:

I hate suspense.

I don't mean "suspense" as in when an author leaves you hanging at the end of a book in a series.  It's more like the "what's going to happen next? Is there a killer in the next room? Is this character going to die?" (If what I'm watching is Game of Thrones, then, yeah, probably). It isn't that I think suspense is contrived or stupid, or whatever - I hate it because it winds me up and makes me anxious and nervous and I feel like I have to leave the room because there is TOO MUCH TENSION GUYS. WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING. Suspense makes me completely unable to watch or enjoy a perfectly good movie or TV show or book or whatever.

(It doesn't have to be serious suspense. Hell, when I was ten I left the room while watching The Little Mermaid 2 because yeah. I'm a baby.)

But for WHATEVER reason, a classic whodunnit mystery is one of my favorite things in the whole wide world.*

I think it what sold me on the whodunnit front, no question asked, was Agatha Christie's absolutely marvelous book, And Then There Were None. Agatha Christie is now one of my absolute favorite authors (usually for this precise reason), but then in the eighth grade, when the only thing I was reading was Harry Potter fanfiction? Oh my god it blew my mind. Agatha Christie's books are famous for being impossible to predict, and And Then There Were None is no exception.

I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, but And Then There Were None was a light in the dark. It was a lightening bolt that I needed to make reading even more active and fun than it already was.**

I moved on from And Then There Were None to other Agatha Christie books. And then I saw her play, The Mousetrap, which is like f*cking whodunnit theatre. And while I really liked what I was finding, I always felt like there should be... more.

Enter Clue.

J'accuse! Via.

I was a huge fan of the board game when I was a kid (I mean, come on, I was allowed to accuse my mom of murder, what kid wouldn't enjoy that), but for whatever reason, I had never decided to watch the movie until this past summer, when I was in the middle of a Netflix haze and decided that I might as well. What's the worst that can happen? I figured. Maybe I'll stop watching it because I hate it. That's the worst. 

Well, I didn't hate it - I loved Clue completely. (And have rewatched it at least twice because it's necessary)

I'm not going to pretend for a minute that Clue is a serious movie in any respect. It's dramatic and hilarious and homicidal, and basically had me trying to figure out the murder(s) for myself as best as I could. I failed, obviously - but it got me thinking: Why aren't there more Whodunnit movies? I've been trying to get a hold of Gosford Park for a while (I let it slip through my clutches because I suck), and in looking for lists online, the movies suggested are... well, they're old. They're old movies, and a bunch of them are just adapted from Agatha Christie books and I think that's silly. There need to be more Whodunnit movies. They're suspenseful in all the best ways, they're creative, and sometimes they're silly or overly dramatic, but I don't care! They're great!

Sorry, Wrong Number is Grade-A drama. Via.

So, this is my grown up Christmas list  reasonable request: More Whodunnits in 2k14, please. I'm looking for them as best as I can as far as books are concerned, but come on, guys - this is 2014 and we have face computers and wrist phones and we don't have more Whodunnit movies? That needs to change. Whodunnits are fun and crazy and dramatic and they engage people in ways that are pretty unique to the genre, and they're one of the few ways I like not knowing what's going to happen. They can be scary, but they're, like - the good scary I guess? (But that's more subjective) I may still strongly dislike/hate suspense, but thanks to this awesome genre of books and movies available to me, I'm able to recognize the necessity of it.



* I'm trying really hard not to swear too much. You should appreciate my restraint. 
** Or maybe it was Scooby Doo instead...

The Tiger's Wife, by Tea Obreht

Genre: Fiction/World Literature

Rating: ★★★★

Published: November 1, 2011

Publisher: Random House

Pages: 368

OK, so. This review has been kind of difficult for me to write, not because I didn't like the book or anything, but because I feel like it's kind of a hard book to summarize concisely. I got The Tiger's Wife for Christmas a few years ago from my grandma, and despite it looking absolutely fascinating - there was a tiger! And great cover art! - it sat on my shelf until I decided last week that enough was enough, and that I needed to finally read it. 

The Tiger's Wife takes place in an unnamed Balkan country picking itself up after war, where Natalia - a young doctor - finds herself compelled by the mysterious circumstances surrounding her grandfather's death. In searching for clues, she turns to the stories he has told her over the years of "the deathless man," as well as his well-worn copy of The Jungle Book. But perhaps the most revealing story is one he never told her - the story of the tiger's wife.

(Mmmmost of that description came from the back cover.)

Before reading The Tiger's Wife, I hadn't read any book set in the Balkans, and had little knowledge about it (the region). And I don't want to say that it's like, necessary, to know about the region before cracking open the book, but it certainly helped me a lot. This is a thick book, you guys. And I don't mean that it's super difficult to understand, it's just that there is a lot of history and information and myth layered on top of each other to create a very rich, very dense book. 

The Tiger's Wife is primarily about the use of myth and allegory in history, as well as the necessity of personal narratives during wartime. And when I say that, I mean taking a very complex issue that is not your own - a bombing, a war, whatever kind of event - and finding your personal story in it. Finding a way to make the events in your life - no matter how out-of-control they seem - your own. 

The use of myths and stories are used throughout The Tiger's Wife to discuss other complex issues, such as nationality, ethnicity, religion, belonging, and - ultimately - death. Because the novel takes place in the Balkans after "a war," and because Obreht is originally Yugoslavian (meaning, to me, that parts of her identity have now been reassigned to difference countries, different nationalities), The Tiger's Wife is very fluid in regards to geography, language, etc. And while a lot of books deal with war, and the realities of living in wartime, The Tiger's Wife gave me a new perspective on what it is like to life while a war is ending, when new identities are being created and old unions are being destroyed, and how families and cities can become easily estranged. 

A map for your viewing pleasure. Via.

Obreht deals with these questions of nationality as well as death by creating a narrative so intricate that, frankly, I was amazed that she was able to tie everything together in the end. She used flashbacks on flashbacks in creating a story-within-a-story-within-a-story narrative that was actually really satisfying and not as confusing as it sounds. It might have been a little slow to start, but once I got hooked, I was hooked  - I almost took the book with me to a job interview to read in the car after my meeting because I just had to know the end right then. 

I'd recommend this book to those who aren't adverse to flashbacks, or story-within-a-story structure. Because, seriously guys, there is a ton of it. I also might recommend reading the Wikipedia page on the Balkans? Or having a map or something? Because that area has been dominated forever (by the Ottomans, and then later there was the Habsburgs, and then WWI happened... you get the idea), and there is just so. much. damn. history. But don't let that stop you - The Tiger's Wife has been on countless lists as a "to-read" book. Go and find out the truth about the tiger's wife and the deathless man and see if you can maybe see the world a little differently when you're done. 

The Gardner Heist, by Ulrich Boser

Genre: Nonfiction/True Crime

Rating: ★★★★

Published: February 24, 2009

Publisher: Harper Collins/Smithsonian

Pages: 223 (260 counting notes and index)

The first time I ever heard about the Gardner Museum theft was during my senior year of high school, when I was channel surfing trying to find some adequate background noise for my homework. An old feature on MSNBC was coming up that it covered an old art theft. I love art, and am interested in crime, so it sounded like a good idea.

The "old art theft" the program covered was none other than the infamous robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. After the first line of the program, I was hooked. And, after reading Boser's The Gardner Heist, I can tell that such sentiment is not uncommon when it comes to the Gardner theft.

The Gardner Heist does more than just describe the theft itself; due to the ambiguous nature of the theft, there is still a lot that remains unknown about the theives' motives, as well as the question of what happened to the art. Because the heist itself lacks that sort of resolution, Boser's story lies more within describing his own personal investigation into the crime - meaning talking to old Boston underworld figures, private detectives, as well as FBI investigators. Taking careful stock of the facts known about the case - like, how the crime was committed - Boser picks up leads, tracks down potential sources, and eventually becomes obsessed with the Gardner theft mystery. In a way, The Gardner Heist is as much about the twisted nature of the Boston criminal underworld - with its connections to the IRA as well as political figures like John Kerry - as it is about the question of why we care and obsess over this theft.

I thought that this book was really accessible; I didn't know a lot about the theft going into it (I had forgotten most of the details from the program), but found that despite the large cast of characters, I had a relatively easy time of remembering who was who and who did what. Boser was careful not to overwhelm the reader, and at clocking in a little over 200 pages, The Gardner Heist strives for conciseness.

Boser's obsession with his private investigation eventually drives him to stop his work on the Gardner theft. He stops tracking down sources, or chasing loose ends, or following up on tips. Despite his years of work on the case, the Gardner theft remains as mysterious as ever; rather, the plot becomes more complicated, eventually leading him to conclude that "Everyone was guilty and no one was." While it was a little worrying, as the reader, to see him become more obsessed by the case and increasingly blinded by the mystery, the book ended as satisfactorily as it could have without a clear answer or solution.

The Gardner Heist didn't cover it, but: This past year, the FBI updated the public on the case, claiming that it knew who the thieves were, and that they had a good idea of where the paintings had gone over the years. (Of course, where the paintings were was another story.) It's possible that after almost 24 years, the Gardner case may finally be coming to a real end.