Monday 28 February 2022

Two Cars

Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (London, 2010.

Blomkvist drives to Gosseberga in a hired car, later retrieved by the police, whereas Salander drives there in a borrowed Milton Security car which is neither retrieved nor even mentioned again. On arrival, she:

"...parked behind a barn in a clump of trees about a hundred metres north of the driveway." (p. 534)

When Blomkvist arrived later, he:

"...parked next to a barn on a forest road a hundred metres to the north... He found fresh tyre tracks in the mud and decided that another car had been parked in the same place earlier, but he did not stop to consider what that might mean." (p. 568)

Why should he have considered it? But we need to. Was the Milton Security car stolen between her and his arrivals?

Chronology In Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy

Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (London, 2008).

"'Mikael Blomkvist was born on 18 January, 1960, which makes him forty-three years old.'" (p. 44)

This chapter, CHAPTER 2, like CHAPTER 1, is dated:

"Friday, 20.xii" (p. 29)

- so it is set in 2003.

CHAPTER 10 is dated:

"Thursday, 9.i - Friday, 31,i" (p. 165)

It follows that Blomkvist's forty-fourth birthday falls during this chapter although it is not mentioned.

EPILOGUE: FINAL AUDIT is dated:

"27.xi - 30.xii" (p. 513)

Thus, the novel ends on the second last day of 2004.

Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire (London, 2010).

CHAPTER 1 is dated:

"Thursday, 16.xii - Friday, 17.xii" (p. 7)

This is December, 2005. It follows that Blomkvist is now forty-five and, in just over a month, will be forty-six.

CHAPTER 2 is dated:

"Friday 17.xii" (p. 30)

In this chapter, Blomkvist says:

"'I'm going to be forty-five any day now.'" (p. 35)

Inconsistency.

Monday 14 December 2020

Roseland

I think that any screen adaptation of a novel should be a serial.

Ian Fleming, From Russia, With Love (London, 1964):

PART ONE: THE PLAN, pp. 7-77.
CHAPTERs 1-10, about Bond's enemies in Russia.
 
PART TWO: THE EXECUTION, pp. 78-208.
CHAPTERs 11-28, beginning with Bond waking up and ending with his apparent death above the words, "THE END"
 
CHAPTER 1, "ROSELAND," CHAPTER 2, "THE SLAUGHTERER," and CHAPTER 3, "POST-GRADUATE STUDIES," summarize the life and career of Donovan Grant, Chief Executioner of SMERSH, and would make a good film, "Roseland," to precede dramatizations of subsequent chapters.

Wednesday 28 October 2020

Problems

 Testing:

I had better give notice here that, since "Blogger" changed, I have been having problems with posting. Currently, if I click to create a new post on any of my other blogs, the screen changes to allow me to create a post on this, the Poul Anderson Appreciation, blog, not on the blog where I want to post. If this situation persists, then I will not, for example, be able to transfer articles to the Poul Anderson: Contributor Articles blog. I have, of course, gone onto a "Help" page and tried to communicate the problem but am not sure whether my message has been sent and, in any case, based on past experience, do not expect any reply. I am taking this opportunity to inform blog readers that there are problems just in case the problems get worse and I become unable to post here as well. I will switch the lap top off for a while and switch back on again later for what that is worth.

Thursday 8 October 2020

Two Spies In Green Hats

"...he took off his hat, a narrow-brimmed, dark-green English felt hat..."
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (London, 2007), CHAPTER 5, p. 195.
 
Thus, two fictional spies wear a green hat, one in THRUSH, the other in Swedish Internal Security.
 
Did Larsson have this UNCLE film in mind?

Thursday 9 April 2020

Chandos, Mansel And Others

Nine novels by Dornford Yates are narrated by Richard Chandos and seven of them also feature Jonathan Mansel.

Gale Warning, narrated by John Bagot, features both Chandos and Mansel.

Shoal Water, narrated by Jeremy Solon, features Mansel.

Three other thrillers by Yates, She Painted Her Face, Safe Custody and Storm Music, feature neither Chandos nor Mansel but are connected in other ways

Mansel is in the Berry Books and elsewhere as "Jonah."

Monday 30 September 2019

Three Heroes

Historical: John Sanders' Nicholas Pym, like a 17th century James Bond.

Contemporary (at the time of writing): Ian Fleming's James Bond.

Futuristic: Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry, like an interstellar James Bond, although the first Flandry story predates the first Bond novel.

The order of the creation of these characters is the reverse of their fictional chronological order.

A meeting of buccaneers on Tortuga, attended by Pym, parallels Goldfinger's "Hoods' Congress," attended by Bond. The Mafia and SMERSH are represented at the Hoods' Congress. Real historical buccaneers attend the meeting in Tortuga. In both cases, a man is murdered leaving the meeting.

In such series, a heroine is usually a single-volume character to be disposed of between volumes. See The Structure Of A Series: Ian Fleming. (Scroll down to the section on "Heroines.")

In the Pym series:

the heroine of Volume I has died in childbirth before the beginning of Volume II;

despite her association with Pym, the heroine of Volume II remains a Royalist and Pym shoots her when she tries to assassinate Cromwell;

if I remember right, Pym meets someone at the end of Volume III whom he marries in Volume IV;

Volume V, which I have not read, is a flashback to a time earlier in Pym's career so we already know that its heroine, if any, will not be around later.