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Jump to navigationJump to searchCarver's Quest by Nick Rennison (view source)
Revision as of 05:25, 10 June 2013
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|name= John / Karen Magrath
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|comment=I've just finished reading Carver's Quest and found it absolutely engrossing. In contrast to one review that found it too slow, I thought it was beautifully paced and pulled together the whole plot into an ending that was quite unexpected. Every page has descriptions and dialogue to relish and events or conversations that deepen the mysteries. I particularly loved Rennison's homage to, and subversion of, literary genres. He knows his 19th Century London, with its squalor and Dickensian characters, and he knows his Conan Doyle. The descriptions of place are vivid and tactile. His characters are utterly believable, from the drunken Dickensian Private Enquiry Agent Jinkinson to the sinister and supercilious MP Lewis Garland and the oily Reverend Dwight. One of the joys of this book is Rennison's mastery of dialogue; the people in it speak (and behave) exactly as they would in their period - and often the dialogue is extremely clever and witty, a real pleasure to read and savour. The relationship between Carver and Quint is a clever subversion of the Holmes-Watson partnership. Carver is a brave, witty, shrewd seeker after truth, but he is no peerless Sherlock Holmes; his restless chewing after the facts but his regular bafflement as things turn out to be unknowable or not what he expected, drives the plot. Quint is certainly no Watson but rather an obstreperous servant who has a somewhat ambiguous (and very blunt) relatationship to his master; he has some ties of loyalty but equally he is out for himself, seeing Carver as "a nice crib" but possibly a temporary one, and prepared to go behind his back when a social superior orders him to commit a heinous deed. It was also fascinating to read this book in the light of current events that have turned our attentions back onto Greece and we get a really vivid description of Greece in the later 19th Century, a plaything of the super powers as were and a mine for archaeologists, often little better than looters, to pillage and make their fame and fortune. How far that urge will go, and produce blackmail and murder, is the plot. It will be fascinating to read further adventures of Carver and Quint and to see how their relationship develops, along with other characters such as the ancient traveller and clubman Mr Moorhouse - is he merely a sounding board or a strange reflection of Mycroft Holmes? - and the fascinating Emily Maitland. More Mr Rennison please sir!
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