Reading the Detectives discussion
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The Floating Admiral
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December 22: The Floating Admiral by The Detection Club (1931)
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Who is reading this one? The spoiler thread is linked below:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
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For anyone just starting The Floating Admiral, my memory from last time around is that the introduction by Chesterton is rather off-putting and doesn't really have anything to do with the rest of the story, so if anyone finds that section a struggle I don't think you will lose much if you skim and move on.
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Just got my book, so will participate! Thanks for the warning Judy! ;)
I've been reading it for a couple days and am bogged down in the details. I need more character development and less talk about the tides/times/etc, which are confusing as Susan said.
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I'm reading the chapter 39 Articles of Doubt and am liking it better - I wonder if it would be so obvious each chapter was written by someone different if I didn't know ahead of time?
I read this years ago. No longer have the book so I'm not re-reading. I think I enjoyed it.I don't remember now whether it seemed to flow smoothly, one chapter to another.
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Has anyone read much by him? I've only listened to some abridged stories with his railway detective Thorpe Hazell which Benedict Cumberbatch read on the radio, which were fun.
I also read Simon Brett's introduction, which was very interesting, and Dorothy L. Sayers's little introduction about how the authors worked.
She mentions that Chesterton's "picturesque preface" was added after the mystery was completed - I did quickly read this section but disliked it, as I'd remembered from my previous read. It has a lot of racial stereotypes, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the main story
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Good question! I've only read the first chapter so far but will be interested to see how much the writers' styles differ.
I've just finished-I did enjoy the different chapters and seeing the different styles-my version had a synopsis of each author in the introduction which was fun to consult before reading each chapter. I'm heading over to the spoiler thread to discuss final thoughts.
I also thought whether English native speakers (which I´m not) found a difference in the language of the chapters. I read the first six chapters so far, and like them.I´d be interested in Whitechurch´s work too. I think I have the railway mysteries with BC.
Frances wrotemy version had a synopsis of each author in the introduction
I would have liked that!
Susan wrote: "December already! I really enjoyed this one, mainly because I sensed the author's enjoyed writing it. As a mystery, it is somewhat confusing!"Agreed! But as a classic, I’m glad I finally read it.
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I thought the first few authors had a similar style and it all flowed quite smoothly, then Agatha Christie's chapter stood out with some good humour involving the talkative landlady, but John Rhode slowed things down with all the information about the tide times, even though I've enjoyed some of his own books a lot.
Agree with all the points, Judy. "Only" the last chapter left (70pp!), so hope to finish it tomorrow.
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I thought Anthony Berkeley was good at combining all those clues, and I also liked his style, but the ending was a bit disappointing.
I also agree with all Judy’s point!Adding that if I hadn’t known that each chapter was written by someone else and that it was a kind of writing game for them I probably wouldn’t really enjoy the book. Then I would suddenly judge it to be clunky and not going anywhere…
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I"m about 1/3 of the way through. I am enjoying it, but that may be helped by the very good reader of the audiobook I borrowed.
I read this in 2020, and felt that the format didn't work to add anything to the reader's pleasure. I haven't re-read it, but my memory is that each new writer seemed to add complications, rather than attempt to integrate their segment into a seamless whole. By the end, I felt that it was out of hand, the characters had lost definition and interest, and the solution was mechanical, rather than the hoped-for "Yes! Of course that's what happened!"
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Just started this book—received from Santa yesterday. So far, pretty fun! I’m on Chapter VII.
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Judy, you are not alone in not enjoying the book.
Reading the Detectives
Books mentioned in this topic
The Sinking Admiral (other topics)The Sinking Admiral (other topics)
The Floating Admiral (other topics)
The Sinking Admiral (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Ronald Knox (other topics)Victor L. Whitechurch (other topics)
This is a particularly fitting book to end 2022 with as our group challenge this year featured the Detection Club. The Detection Club was formed in 1930 by a group of British mystery writers, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Arthur Morrison, John Rhode, Jessie Louisa Rickard, Baroness Orczy, R Austin Freeman, G D H Cole, Margaret Cole, E C Bentley, Henry Wade, and H C Bailey. Anthony Berkeley was instrumental in setting up the club, and the first president was G K Chesterton. There was a fanciful initiation ritual with an oath probably written by either Chesterton or Sayers, and the club held regular dinner meetings in London.
Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton and nine other writers from the legendary Detection Club collaborate in this fiendishly clever but forgotten crime novel first published over 80 years ago. Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the Inspector's investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vicar, whose boat the body was found in, is clearly withholding information, and the victim's niece has disappeared. There is clearly more to this case than meets the eye -- even the identity of the victim is called into doubt. Inspector Rudge begins to wonder just how many people have contributed to this extraordinary crime and whether he will ever unravel it! In 1931, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and ten other crime writers from the newly-formed 'Detection Club' collaborated in publishing a unique crime novel. In a literary game of consequences, each author would write one chapter, leaving G.K. Chesterton to write a typically paradoxical prologue and Anthony Berkeley to tie up all the loose ends. In addition, each of the authors provided their own solution in a sealed envelope, all of which appeared at the end of the book, with Agatha Christie's ingenious conclusion acknowledged at the time to be 'enough to make the book worth buying on its own'. The authors of this novel are: G. K. Chesterton, Canon Victor Whitechurch, G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley.
In 2016 members of the Detection Club collaborated on The Sinking Admiral 85 years after the first joint effort.
Please do not post spoilers in this thread. Thank you.