Refreshing
Well, up until now I hadn't really read any crime novels that weren't either "modern" or "old". This one is in the middle -kind of-, a story from the nineteen sixties, and as the title says, refreshing. Allow me to elaborate. There isn't really a star in this investigation, the statements and the evidence are thoroughly analized and revisited by a whole interdisciplinary team of investigators; we get to meet policemen, detectives, doctors, the lab, no one being "superior" or more important than the others (except from the importance derived from hierarchy), here not only them but also the other characters involved are relevant to the story and communicate and talk about the case just like normal people would do. This last part seems obvious but think about the contemporary (I'm writing this in 2020) movies and books, where are the supporting characters? they're basically shadows, they don't talk about essential details, they don't "gossip" as normal people do, so it kind of makes the narrative seem artificial and forced, making the intention of having a protagonist as hero and role model seem too obvious, and that's understandable, but not real. In modern mystery/crime novels the protagonist interacts with their team in isolated situations, they’re specialized workers who just do their part (and many times are expendable) and the only one who knows what’s really going on and what the evidence means is the lead investigator, who takes what they say or what a witness or others say and get their conclusions almost without sharing them with anyone, then putting themselves or someone they love in danger (which is pretty far-fetched, improbable and many times ridiculous and unfortunately too formulaic) very rarely calling for backup, sometimes even without a weapon or a cellphone, then, many times they end up in hospital (or something to that effect) and someone else explains to them what really happened and how it all unfolded (even though they’re the ones that supposedly knew about everything). In contrast -going back to the sixties mystery- I loved the fact that as the story unfolds, the reader gets to share the detectives’ suspicions by examining the clues with all of them, it’s not just one who solves everything because all of them need the feedback and expertise from the others, and finally, the conclusion and explanation of the facts are given by normal curiosity and conversation between normal people in extraordinary circumstances. And that is something that also happens in old stories, where knowledge is extensively built by communication, by sharing details and theories (even if there is a much more prominent figure such as Sherlock Holmes). All in all, analizing the formulas/structure writers use in different time periods is fascinating, and it’s not to say that they’re better or worse, they’re just different and more or less appealing than others, for instance, for me, the old detective stories are definitely a keeper.