When I first heard that Andrew Cartmel was taking a detour from The Vinyl Detective series to bring us The Paperback Sleuth, I was ambivalent. I adore The Vinyl Detective and was sad to see him go on hiatus. (Maybe to never return. I dunno.) But there is a character in that series who collected paperbacks so I was confident we weren't going too far afield. Besides, we should embrace change, right?
My confidence was not misplaced because Death in Fine Condition and its bibliophilic heroine, Cordelia, are not far removed from my beloved Vinyl Detective. Indeed, her adventure takes place in the same fictional world as she is Stinky Stanmer's sister. The hero of the other series even gets name-checked, though not favorably, much to my surprise. I still chuckled, though.
Our heroine is a bit impecunious in addition to loving paperbacks. She is usually late on paying her rent but strangely timely when it comes to procuring marijuana. One day at her dealer's home, Cordelia notices a photo on the wall of a couple people posing next to a bookcase filled with what appears to be a complete set of Sleuth Hound paperbacks.
Cordelia turns out to be something of a rogue and a villain as she sets out to steal them after discovering that one of the people in the photo is her dealer's landlord. A little luck compensates for her lack of burglar skills and she ends up with an entire set. In fine condition.
Unbeknownst to Cordelia, the landlord and owner of these books, a red-headed fellow named Colin Cutterham, is the leader of a local organized crime troop. This not only makes her fearful for her life, but also serves as justification for her thievery. She discovers that Cutterham has procured a second set of Sleuth Hound paperbacks and Cordelia steals it too.
Cartmel builds up some nice Hitchcockian tension and puts Cordelia into no small bit of peril. Cutterham sends a heavy to her flat but she manages to take care of him with a fatal smack with her laptop. Luckily for her, her landlord, Edwin, happens to be this kinda sorta Dextery fellow. That is, he is a serial killer but he only dispatches evil people. This I did not expect. One skill that goes along with being a serial killer is the ability to dispose of bodies so that they cannot be found. Needless to say, this ability comes in handy for Cordelia.
Death in Fine Condition felt a lot like a Vinyl Detective novel. The heroine is someone who covets and is an expert in collecting a particular kind of cultural artifact. Cartmel's prose here is in his usual easy going style sprinkled with sarcasm and the occasional tangent into the mania of the collector.
Cordelia, however, is the opposite of The Vinyl Detective in many ways. She is lower class, does not drink good wine and, sadly, is not an ailurophile. She thieves and connives to get what she seeks whereas The Vinyl Detective generally stays within the bounds of the law. The Vinyl Detective is a gentleman, something of a neo-dandy, whereas Cordelia is rougher around the edges, more like someone who would appear on Studs Turkel's podcast, if he was still around.
There are a few scenes where Cordelia settles into a bath for a little bean flicking. Not only do they introduce a bit of prurience but they also illustrate why I found Death in Fine Condition to be good but not as much fun as a Vinyl Detective tale: Cordelia goes it alone.
The Vinyl Detective has Nevada, his girlfriend, as companion and interlocutor but Cordelia is single and we spend more time in her head than with her in conversation. For The Vinyl Detective, Cartmel took Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op and de-hard-boiled him and then threw him into Agatha Christie ensemble situations. Here, Cartmel throws just a touch of hard-boiled quality in but Cordelia is just not an interesting enough character for me to shoulder the plot alone.
It's not that I don't like her at all and she is certainly a very capable stoner, but there's just something missing, something to really endear her to me that just isn't here. I think that a big part of this is that, while The Vinyl Detective would have fun conversations with a cast of goofy people, Cordelia's chats are more serious. Or, if not serious, just more banal. And Cartmel overcompensates for this by making a fair amount of Cordelia's internal monologues overwrought with metaphor and clever allusions.
Despite all of this, Death in Fine Condition is a fun story. I did smile while reading it and found the thriller elements rather thrilling. Cordelia worked best when interacting with other characters so hopefully she gets a roommate, girlfriend, or just does more sleuthing with another person present.
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