The Embroidered Corpse
(A Fun Yarn, Pun Definitely Intended)
Anthony Burgess claimed that as soon as he received a book to review he would climb into bed and stay there until he finished reading it and then jump out and write his 800-1000 word review. He said that he had to review books this way because he was prone to forget and have to read the book again if too much time had passed between the initial reading and writing of the review. Imagine Burgess trying to curl up in bed with a good e-book, sharing his sheets, pillows, blankets and cats with a computer keyboard monitor, tower and mouse. Some would argue that he’d be able to read the book on an
ipod, e-Book Reader/Viewer, or a small laptop. I don’t think he would have liked that. He probably would have said that something organic was lost in the translation. I agree. There is something about the glare of the screen and wavering images that makes a computer inferior to a book. After all, an image of a letter on a screen is intangible, a ghost-in-the-machine. A book has substance, it lives and breathes.
The Embroidered Corpse, by Brian Kavanaugh published by Bewrite Books 2006 (previously published in Australia by Jacobyte Books 2002) was sent to me on a pdf file. I hate them. So I immediately went to my nearest Staples office supply and copy center and ran off hard copy, printed on both sides of the paper to save me money. I sat on the couch during a humid Sunday night; the oscillating fan soothed my sweaty body and cooled my heated brain. I began to read The Embroidered Corpse. My wife and my eldest child came into the living room, turned on the television to the Disney channel and cranked the power switch of the fan up high. Pages of The Embroidered Corpse flew through space like confetti on Mardi gras. Frustrated, I gathered the manuscript pages and put them in my in-tray, where I promptly forgot them. A few days later after finishing another assignment I read the Embroidered Corpse straight through in one sitting.
The Embroidered Corpse begins when Australian native Belinda Lawrence, with the assistance of her friend and business partner Hazel Whitby accidentally comes into possession of a piece of tapestry that might be the final missing piece of the Bayeux Tapestry and the solution to an ancient puzzle. Suddenly, everyone seems interested in her piece of tapestry. The bodies pile up. Belinda attempts to find answers and looks for a connection between her fragment of tapestry and the murder of an antique dealer from whose shop she had first observed the tapestry fragment. Later, her local Vicar is killed. She had inquired from him the history of the Bayeux Tapestry. Hazel, and Belinda’s boy-friend Mark, at first consider Belinda is daft, thinking that she is being pursued by an order of murderous monks. They further resent Belinda having them running all over the English countryside chasing down clues to the actual meaning and authenticity of her piece of tapestry. A series of events occur that can’t be called coincidences; including Hazel’s mysterious disappearance, Mark begins to believe Belinda may have been right all along.
Before I discuss the Embroidered Corpse further I need to get something off my chest. Dan Brown is a predictable writer when it comes to plot lines and a bad example for other writers to follow. Yeah, I know Dan Brown and his novel The Da Vinci Code has nothing to do with The Embroidered Corpse. And I know that The Da Vinci Code is a monstrosity of best seller that has stayed at the top of The New York Times Best Seller List since the second coming of the Bush Dynasty. There are some similarities between The Da Vinci Code and The Embroidered Corpse. I want to mention three, the rest I’ll leave to the reader to discover for their pleasure. First, both Dan Brown and Brian Kavanaugh are great researchers. Their novels provide history lessons that make the reader curious about the past. (If as a reader you don’t find yourself googling and researching the Holy Grail or Bayeux Tapestry, then you’re probably curiosity-challenged.) The second similarity is how aptly they were able to blend history with fiction to make a compelling mystery. Anthony Burgess recognized the novelistic potential of Brown’s subject way back when he reviewed the book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Burgess writes, “It is typical of my unregenerable soul that I can only see this as a marvelous theme for a novel. The third similarity is how they reverted to otiose writing to create two clichéd and predictable villains, Brown’s Sir Leigh Teabing and Kavanaugh’s Sir Gerald Taylor. Both are men of academia, obsessed and transparent characters and give a villainous ‘Goodbye Mr. Bond speech.’ For some reason, when a villain has the hero or heroine in his or her grasp they suddenly suffer from a case of pleonasm and over-explain their motives on how they will accomplish their dastardly deeds. This of course allows our hero or heroine extra-time to make a daring escape and save the day and allows the novelist to write a sequel. Brown has a prequel, Angels and Demons. One can only hope that Kavanaugh has one in the works. I’d like to see what Belinda, Mark and Hazel are doing in the future.
OALA Reviews
-Lee Gooden 8-27-06
(A Fun Yarn, Pun Definitely Intended)
Anthony Burgess claimed that as soon as he received a book to review he would climb into bed and stay there until he finished reading it and then jump out and write his 800-1000 word review. He said that he had to review books this way because he was prone to forget and have to read the book again if too much time had passed between the initial reading and writing of the review. Imagine Burgess trying to curl up in bed with a good e-book, sharing his sheets, pillows, blankets and cats with a computer keyboard monitor, tower and mouse. Some would argue that he’d be able to read the book on an
ipod, e-Book Reader/Viewer, or a small laptop. I don’t think he would have liked that. He probably would have said that something organic was lost in the translation. I agree. There is something about the glare of the screen and wavering images that makes a computer inferior to a book. After all, an image of a letter on a screen is intangible, a ghost-in-the-machine. A book has substance, it lives and breathes.
The Embroidered Corpse, by Brian Kavanaugh published by Bewrite Books 2006 (previously published in Australia by Jacobyte Books 2002) was sent to me on a pdf file. I hate them. So I immediately went to my nearest Staples office supply and copy center and ran off hard copy, printed on both sides of the paper to save me money. I sat on the couch during a humid Sunday night; the oscillating fan soothed my sweaty body and cooled my heated brain. I began to read The Embroidered Corpse. My wife and my eldest child came into the living room, turned on the television to the Disney channel and cranked the power switch of the fan up high. Pages of The Embroidered Corpse flew through space like confetti on Mardi gras. Frustrated, I gathered the manuscript pages and put them in my in-tray, where I promptly forgot them. A few days later after finishing another assignment I read the Embroidered Corpse straight through in one sitting.
The Embroidered Corpse begins when Australian native Belinda Lawrence, with the assistance of her friend and business partner Hazel Whitby accidentally comes into possession of a piece of tapestry that might be the final missing piece of the Bayeux Tapestry and the solution to an ancient puzzle. Suddenly, everyone seems interested in her piece of tapestry. The bodies pile up. Belinda attempts to find answers and looks for a connection between her fragment of tapestry and the murder of an antique dealer from whose shop she had first observed the tapestry fragment. Later, her local Vicar is killed. She had inquired from him the history of the Bayeux Tapestry. Hazel, and Belinda’s boy-friend Mark, at first consider Belinda is daft, thinking that she is being pursued by an order of murderous monks. They further resent Belinda having them running all over the English countryside chasing down clues to the actual meaning and authenticity of her piece of tapestry. A series of events occur that can’t be called coincidences; including Hazel’s mysterious disappearance, Mark begins to believe Belinda may have been right all along.
Before I discuss the Embroidered Corpse further I need to get something off my chest. Dan Brown is a predictable writer when it comes to plot lines and a bad example for other writers to follow. Yeah, I know Dan Brown and his novel The Da Vinci Code has nothing to do with The Embroidered Corpse. And I know that The Da Vinci Code is a monstrosity of best seller that has stayed at the top of The New York Times Best Seller List since the second coming of the Bush Dynasty. There are some similarities between The Da Vinci Code and The Embroidered Corpse. I want to mention three, the rest I’ll leave to the reader to discover for their pleasure. First, both Dan Brown and Brian Kavanaugh are great researchers. Their novels provide history lessons that make the reader curious about the past. (If as a reader you don’t find yourself googling and researching the Holy Grail or Bayeux Tapestry, then you’re probably curiosity-challenged.) The second similarity is how aptly they were able to blend history with fiction to make a compelling mystery. Anthony Burgess recognized the novelistic potential of Brown’s subject way back when he reviewed the book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Burgess writes, “It is typical of my unregenerable soul that I can only see this as a marvelous theme for a novel. The third similarity is how they reverted to otiose writing to create two clichéd and predictable villains, Brown’s Sir Leigh Teabing and Kavanaugh’s Sir Gerald Taylor. Both are men of academia, obsessed and transparent characters and give a villainous ‘Goodbye Mr. Bond speech.’ For some reason, when a villain has the hero or heroine in his or her grasp they suddenly suffer from a case of pleonasm and over-explain their motives on how they will accomplish their dastardly deeds. This of course allows our hero or heroine extra-time to make a daring escape and save the day and allows the novelist to write a sequel. Brown has a prequel, Angels and Demons. One can only hope that Kavanaugh has one in the works. I’d like to see what Belinda, Mark and Hazel are doing in the future.
OALA Reviews
-Lee Gooden 8-27-06
posted by Lee Gooden | 8:59 PM
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