Safe-cracking and jewel thieves and an Exasperated Brit
Two books, two movies, one podcast
Besides, we needed money, the sooner the better. Uncle Mick’s business had been slow since the war started. We were as patriotic as the next family, and, knowing it wasn’t exactly cricket to rob houses in wartime, we’d held off as long as possible. But now our coffers, such as they were, were low. It was time to put scruples aside. Desperate times and all that.
—A Peculiar Combination
Hi, friends,
How goes it?
Diving right in!
London, 1940. Safe-crackers Electra McDonnell and her Uncle Mick are caught breaking into a house. They’re separated, brought to a second location, and questioned. It doesn’t take long for Electra to realize that she’s not talking to the police:
“I’m not sure what to say . . .” I glanced at the insignia on his uniform, guessed at his rank, and then purposefully demoted him. “Lieutenant.”
According to Major Ramsey, her country needs her help. And, if she wants to keep herself and her uncle out of prison, she’ll need to provide it.
So, she and Major Ramsey head off to open a safe in order to keep some plans out of the hands of the Germans… but when they get there, the safe has already been emptied and there’s a dead body on the floor.
Okay, so on the one hand, this is one of those books that you know the beats of pretty much from the first few pages: Electra—Ellie—has a stereotypical Irish temper, curls that Refuse To Be Tamed, is totally effortlessly gorgeous but doesn’t seem to know it; the Major is Hot and Uptight, prone to arm-grabbing and borderline negging:
“I am certain you’ll be quite presentable,” he said, in that charming way he had of hovering right between compliment and rudeness.
Oh, there’s also a secondary love interest that the books keep trying to convince me is a viable candidate, but come on. We all know how stories work.
Ellie, I will admit, is a heroine that drove me right up the wall a good deal of the time. She does a whole lot of protesting too much about old Major Ramsey, for one thing:
But I slipped my arm through his, noting in a disinterested sort of way the hard muscle beneath the smooth fabric of his shirt.
Come on, now. That is not a disinterested description, and you know it, lady.
And she also plays pretty dumb about her love interests’ dislike of one another:
I could sense an undertone of something beneath this friendly conversation. They were, for some reason, both determined to dislike each other and doing only a haphazard job of trying to hide it.
“For some reason.” Stop it. I can give heroines in YA novels a pass for that because of their age, but this is a woman in her mid-20s who is savvy in literally every single other way, and I just can’t. That said, even though she’s a pretty familiar character/type, I largely enjoyed my time with her.
And while it’s not super likely that I’ll bother with the later books in the series as they pub—not because I’m mad at them, I just don’t think I’ll have a Burning Need to read them, but you never know—I will have affection for them forever due to the following passage, which caused me to bellow OMG CALM DOWN and then cackle like a grackle for like five minutes before I could keep reading:
I happened to be looking at the major as Kimble said these final words, and I had the interesting experience of watching his eyes go from twilight blue to cold steel gray in the space of a second.
So, yeah. Sometimes you want something that’s fun and easy and takes no work. And sometimes you want so much of that thing that you’ll read two of them back-to-back over the course of a day and a half. Which is what I did with A Peculiar Combination and The Key to Deceit. Right books, right time.
Watching: Jewel thieves!
To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955): This was a re-watch, but I hadn’t seen it in a million years, so it was almost like watching it for the first time. Cary Grant is a reformed cat burglar, Grace Kelly is the very rich daughter of a very rich woman; jewelry starts getting stolen, Cary is the main suspect, his only recourse is (obviously) to run away from the police and prove his innocence by catching the thief himself.
It’s surprisingly low-key and easy-going and there are lots of romantic bits and funny bits, but the moment that made me laugh the most was when the French teen who’s hitting on Cary Grant refers to GRACE FREAKING KELLY as “an old car.” Second place went to the moment that Grace is FURIOUS with Cary and angrily wielding an umbrella and seriously how was she even real, she absolutely eclipses everyone else in the movie, which, considering that she’s playing opposite CARY ‘THE CHARMINGEST CHARMER WHO EVER CHARMED’ GRANT, is saying something.
Also, her chemistry with Jessie Royce Landis, who plays her mother, is FANTASTIC.
Thief (Michael Mann, 1981): Holy crow, this one was something. The only other Michael Mann movie I’ve seen is Manhunter—in which Brian Cox plays Hannibal Lecter and is LEGIT TERRIFYING, good lord, someone on Letterboxd said something to the effect of ‘sure, Anthony Hopkins and Mads Mikkelsen as Lecter are great, witty and urbane and devious, but Brian Cox really makes you believe that he’d eat your face’ and I TOTALLY agree, but I digress—and now I guess I need to watch more Michael Mann movies??
Anyway, this one stars James Caan as a safecracker and jewel thief who is clearly suffering from PTSD and possibly some other issues, and yearns for a “normal” life with a wife and a house and kids, so he does a job for a guy that he doesn’t really want to do a job for, and woof, things do not go well for anyone.
It can be read as a Faust retelling, it can be read as a statement about worker’s rights/labor, it has a bananas score by Tangerine Dream and long, dialogue-free process-y sequences of drilling into safes, and everything—the dialogue, the lighting, the tension—is just a little MORE than real life. Everything is heightened. It will absolutely not be for everyone, but it went over very well at our house.
John Robie: Danielle, you are just a girl. She is a woman.
Danielle Foussard: Why do you want to buy an old car if you can get a new one cheaper? It will run better and last longer.
—To Catch a Thief
Listening:
St. Elwick’s Neighbourhood Association Newsletter Podcast: I don’t even really know how to explain this one, but I listened to like, nine episodes while out walking this weekend and I don’t know what I’m going to do when I run out. It’s the creation of Mike Wozniak—a British comedian who you might know from Season 11 of Taskmaster, or maybe from the Beef and Dairy Network podcast.
The premise is that the print Newsletter was defunded, so Malcolm Durridge, the editor, has transitioned over to podcast form, which he is pretty much terrible at: he’s constantly frustrated with his guests, he’s very bad at taking a hint, he’s always sharing nuggets that SHOULD NOT BE SHARED, like who in town is having an affair, etc.
So it’s kind of a parody of small-town British life, and a story about a guy who maybe thinks he’s a lot more important and better at stuff than he really is. But it’s also clear that his self-importance largely comes from his feelings about being out of work, and feeling inadequate, etc., etc. So it’s quietly hilarious but also a little bit tragic. I love it.
And that’s all for now, I think?
More soon, I’m sure.
Leila
LOL, "desperate times, and all that." I somehow got on this Youtube kick with this lawyer who picks locks for fun, and I love the idea of a lady safe-cracker. The sort of hard-boiled yet turgid (heh) prose sounds like it's also quite amusing.