{"id":1484,"date":"2019-11-03T01:26:41","date_gmt":"2019-11-03T01:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=1484"},"modified":"2020-08-09T16:43:37","modified_gmt":"2020-08-09T16:43:37","slug":"pride-cometh-before-the-sale-behind-murder-on-the-first-nights-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=1484","title":{"rendered":"Pride Cometh Before the Sale: Behind “Murder on the First Night’s Feast”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There is a C.S. Lewis quote about the blindness of the proud. To paraphrase, someone completely full of themselves is so busy looking down their noses that they\u2019re blind to what\u2019s above them. And what\u2019s above them, of course, is the whole, wide world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re all prideful. Someway, somehow we\u2019re all darn proud of something: kids, cars, bankrolls, something. Hell, writing for publication is itself an exercise in pride. It takes vanity to assume another person would invest their time and money in your words. Yes, we\u2019re all proud because we\u2019re all human, and it\u2019s all healthy enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve tackled pride as a subject before. In \u201cCrack-Up at Waycross,\u201d<\/a> (Murder Under the Oaks<\/em>, 2015) the would-be pecan truck jacker has such a grandiosity complex he\u2019s barely bothered to plan the jacking. \u201cBook of Hours\u201d<\/a>(AHMM<\/em> Jul\/Aug ’18) is about recovering self-confidence. I\u2019ve even done pride in an amateur sleuth way, one Vi Celucci in \u201cTwo Bad Hamiltons and a Hirsute Jackson\u201d<\/a> (AHMM<\/em> May ’15) being too self-actualized not to meddle in a Secret Service investigation. Pride is endless fodder for a humor guy. But I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve done the whole pride thing as intentionally as with \u201cMurder on the First Night\u2019s Feast\u201d (ahem, proudly included in the November 2019 Mystery Weekly<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter Madame Feubert. It\u2019s 1932, the Touraine countryside and the height of French complacency between WWI and WWII. Mme. Feubert and her gown-and-tux cabal are the latest in a line of self-declared gourmands devoted \u2013 I mean devoted \u2013 to the Sanglier a la Montvaste, a cut of boar served at only one Loire River chateau and only at a presumed peak each October. For centuries, their retconned legend goes, the Montvaste family has entertained Europe\u2019s finest palates for a two-week feast and those-in-the-know soiree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As the proud will do, they\u2019ve self-divided. Mme. Feubert and her side claim the Sanglier\u2019s tenderloin is of course its true choice cut. No, the other side maintains. The tenderloin is fine enough, but the real lover of the Sanglier understands the strip loin has no equal. A small distinction? An important one in the scheme of things? Absolutely, to Mme. Feubert. Damn near life-and-death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The very sanglier
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Which becomes important because someone has died. A British food writer who left early and unimpressed washes up in the river shallows behind the chateau. It\u2019s murder, and it looks like their pride-wounded host was whodunnit. Be that as it may, Mme. Feubert sees preserving the feast proceedings as more essential than finding the truth. She harries the S\u00fbret\u00e9<\/a> inspector on the case with possible alibis and concocted motives among the chateau staff. Her creative instincts make her a decent detective, something else she takes pride in holding over the inspector. Problem is, she\u2019s still looking down her nose at the facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Your man on the scene: Chenonceau, April 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In 2018 I had the good fortune to spend time in Tours and the Loire Valley (collectively and traditionally, the Touraine<\/a>). In the 15th<\/sup> and 16th<\/sup> Centuries, as French power grew and consolidated, the Touraine changed from border castles guarding against Moorish incursion into the forested garden for the aristocracy. Even today, a train ride from Tours will take you past dozens of chateaux in styles from traditional to fairy tale. I used Chenonceau<\/a> as a loose model for Chateau Montvaste, not least because we took a train there and walked the the grounds, and it rained buckets. Plenty of time to explore the place. I was most taken with how Chenonceau life was shaped by the river just outside its walls. How the house even grew to incorporate the river, to span it with a long gallery serving as a bridge. Most of that wound up below the story surface in the final version, though I did toss that dead body in the shallows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The house was the hardest character to write. Mme. Feubert found her voice and wit early on (unusual for me, but she\u2019s willful), and the suspects fell into place with the requisite work. Inspector Duplanche is my homage to Golden Age sleuths I grew up reading. The victim, Bale, is largely dismissed by our heroine and her friends as a rude inconvenience, not a tragedy. It was the chateau itself that vexed me. Focusing on how grand things were even in their decay slowed down the story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse, basic point-of-view:  Mme. Feubert is well-acquainted with the house down to its boar head carvings and which dead ancestor is which on its portrait wall. She wouldn\u2019t dwell on familiar things except to point out those details when the Inspector seemed oblivious to their significance. It\u2019s only at the end, with the truths unveiled and pride balloon punctured, that Mme. Feubert sees the grounds again with fresh eyes.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to have each element in \u201cMurder\u201d echo vanity, to contrast the largeness of the house and puffery of its tradition with the smallest details and basest motives. Does it work? I would say so, except as the author I may be blinded with pride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Digestifs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n