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Change is fine, as long as it’s predictable.
“Travel is never a mistake. Even if the trip is not fabulous, it will give you a new perspective. You know that moment when you fit a customer with new glasses? And everything they’ve gotten used to seeing as blurry or distant suddenly pops into focus? You’ve made everything old new for them. Going away from home for a little while can do the same thing.”
“There’s got to be a reason she wanted to come here,” Amity says. “I agree,” Wyatt says. “And we should get to the bottom of it.”
The real mystery - kind of reminds me of Society of Puzzlemakers
“You’re nosy,” I told her once. “I’m curious,” she answered. But all I could see was that she was collecting more people to leave behind.
“Seedy guys?” Deborah says. “And what do you think that’s code for? Nancy Drew books morphed over the years, but the earliest editions were classist, racist, and anti-Semitic. Quite a trifecta, no? The ‘criminals’ were always poor and uneducated and often described as being dark-skinned or having stereotypical Jewish features.”
The way Amity and Wyatt look at me, it occurs to me that if anyone is going to be playing the Watson role in this investigative trio, it’s me.
Mr. Groberg says we’re all nosy neighbors, unable to resist the allure of what goes on beyond closed doors, to expose what others are hiding. I think he’s right.
Isn’t it rotten when the facts ruin a good story?”
Lady Blanders turns back toward us. “So, you see, I have an airtight alibi. And even if I didn’t, what could my motive be? Why would I possibly want to murder Tracy Penny, a common hairdresser? What is she to me? An utter insignificance.”
Allusion to The Mirror Crack'd - though likely not the same solution? Still - she could have spoken about anything during the appointment.
You Americans have long loved English-village mysteries, but there was such a boom during the pandemic. Here too. Thinking about murder, I suppose, is less stressful than worrying that you might drop dead because someone coughed on you.
Guilty
Also, they’re supposed to be an escape, but what about the letdown when you close the book and come back to reality?
That can be most fiction, honestly
Instead of answering, I kiss him back. And why not? It’s a foreign fling, all in good fun, nothing more.
There's a whole song by the Go-Go's about this
“Who wants someone who doesn’t want them?”
The secrets of strangers are pure pleasure. Murder, revenge, lies, abandonment—they’re a respite from the mess and confusion of our own lives. Fictional chaos is a holiday, a beautiful distraction. We can go along for the ride and shiver from the danger without worrying that we’ll get hurt. And in the end, all questions will be answered, all actions explained. Everything will be clear and put back in its place. The sun will come up, the bus will run its route, the nosy neighbor will resume her watch, and the beauty at the bakery will smile and ask which kind of savory pie we’d like today. Fake
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“You are cold, because you are alone; no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you.”
I may never know what makes someone broken or whole or why someone stays or goes. But I can accept that some things, even important, life-changing things, remain a mystery.
