Crime Fiction Novel Report

Introduction
In the novel, Good Morning, Midnight, by Reginald Hill, there are two detectives that are taking on the case of Palinurus (Pal) Maciver. These detectives are Andy Dalziel (Fat Andy) and Peter Pascoe. Pal Maciver is found dead in a locked room of his house. What is so peculiar of the apparent suicide is that he has mirrored the way his father killed himself ten years earlier. Pascoe is determined to find out the truth, despite Dalziel's efforts to put get him off the scene. He begins to look into what Dalziel’s connection with Kay Kafka is and why he is so sure that she can have had nothing to do with Pal's death. All of Pascoe’s suspicions lead into a page-turner because of the books incredible suspense and action.

Character Profile - Detectives
Andy Dalziel is the lead detective in the case of Pal Maciver’s suicide along with his apprentice, Peter Pascoe. Andy Dalziel is known throughout the book as Fat Andy because of his size. If you aren’t paying attention in the book you will think they are two people because it is not clear from the start they are the same person. As I got further and further along in the book, Dalziel began to remind me of Simon Cowell from American Idol. He is rude, says what he thinks and yet has a streak of kindness running through him that will show through every so often. Dalziel's main strength is his Yorkshire brusqueness, which makes for very entertaining reading. Because of this, Dalziel is probably one of the most outstanding characters in the novel. Dalziel is suspicious of Pascoe, who is university-educated, and doubts that he has it in him to be a good detective. But over time, they both come to appreciate each other's strengths and prove to be an excellent duo.
Pascoe is the exact opposite of Dalziel as he is much kinder in general and to the public. The reader views him as the nice, curious, new guy who still has much to learn from his superior, Dalziel. Pascoe, much more cultured and sensitive to others feelings, is the exact opposite of Dalziel. Pascoe starts to become suspicious of Dalziel. He becomes even more suspicious of him when Dalziel stonewalls his enquiries about Pal’s hated stepmother, Kay Kafka. Pascoe is determined to find out whether it was suicide or murder and what the nature of Dalziel's relationship is with Kafka.

Clues
The clues start to be shown from the beginning when Pal Maciver is found dead in a locked room, having died in exactly the same way as his father. Both Pal Maciver Jr. and Sr. had a book of Emily Dickinson poetry found by their sides. This book proves to contain key evidence withheld in the pages and the poem is where the book gets its name. Pal juniors death is initially put down to suicide, but events occur to point towards it being murder. He was positioned lying down with a shotgun to his head. It seems as if he pulled the trigger with his big toe, but Pascoe digs deep to find out the truth. The main suspect is Pal's stepmother, Kay Kafka, with whom Pal had a stormy relationship. But for reasons unknown to Pascoe, Kafka refuses to admit that she could have had anything to do with the death. As the police investigate, Dalziel appears to compromise the case with his relationship with Kafka. While the international corporate world and government spies intersect the investigation, Pascoe begins to worry that Dalziel is trying to cover up Kafka as the murderer. Even stranger is that Dalziel led the inquiries into the Maciver Seniors suicide.
With more poking around, Pal finds a complex family relationship between Kay Kafka and her stepchildren; one of whom worships Kay, while the other two hate her. Pascoe is determined to find out the truth, despite Dalziel's efforts to guide him away from Kafka. Pascoe tries to find the connection of Dalziel with Kay Kafka and why he is covering for her. Literary allusions stick out from characters and action for the reader to see as key evidence in the story. At the beginning of the novel, as the reader, you can tell that the death of Pal isn’t a suicide through allusions used by the author. Pascoe also finds a long audio recording, which establishes itself as being key evidence pointing towards Kafka. All of a sudden, a key witness, the hooker Madame Dolores vanishes and Dalziel and Pascoe have to think fast before more people are killed.



Three Passages
One of my favourite parts in the novel where the book just starts to heat up is at the beginning of page 134. This is when Pascoe is doing some research on his own about the murder and he is trying to not let Dalziel here of what he is doing even though they are partners. He does this because of the fact that he doesn’t trust his superior. “And, just to be thorough, and in order to see exactly how much of a copycat it is, I’d like you to dive into the evidence store and see what you can find relating to the suicide of Palinurus Maciver Senior. Discreetly. You know how leaky this place is, and I shouldn’t like the press making a thing about the copycat element. In fact he didn’t give a toss about the press, it was Andy Dalziel whose antennae he didn’t want to alert.”
In this quote, Pascoe is telling Shirley Novello to do some research on the case.
The second quote I chose is on page 238 when Pascoe is thinking of the night when his wife, Ellie is talking to him about the case. She worries that he is so caught up in trying to find the evidence for a murder, when it may very well be the suicide it appears to be. “Last night, Ellie had asked him about the case and he’d told her it was out of his hands, making a comic story of himself and Wield being summoned to the head’s study. He’d been rather taken aback when she’d said, “Maybe the trouble is you’d much rather it were murder then suicide, Peter.” “Why do you say that?” he asked. “Perhaps because you find murder much easier to deal with.” He’d lain in bed thinking about this. And she was right of course, damn her.” This, however, still does not affect Pascoe’s train of thought and it makes him even hungrier to find evidence on the case he still believes is a murder.
The third and final quote I’ve decided to share is on page 374 when Pascoe shows how capable a detective he is interrogating Mrs. Kafka. He had been asking very intrusive and sensitive questions but he asks the questions in a way that is so kind that she feels that she wants to answer the questions. “She smiled at him and then went on, “I think that what he was saying to me by leaving the volume open at this poem was, listen, love, I got this one right in the end. Now I know what this one means. He was offering the only kind of comfort he could think of. I believe he tried to write me a note explaining what was going on in his mind, saying how sorry he was, but found the only words he could use were inadequate. So he chose instead to let Emily describe how he felt for him and, by using her poem he said he loved me.” She fell silent Pascoe was deeply moved. All the nasty things that had been said about this woman sounded in his head now like mere snarls of envy and resentment.” In the quote, Pascoe asks why in Pal Maciver Seniors suicide he had a poem of Emily Dickinson beside him. Pascoe continues to persist in his interrogations of her in search of more truths and possibly the answer to the murder.

By Andrew Irwin

Obama's Eulogy For Ted Kennedy

Multi-media techniques in President Obama’s eulogy to Ted Kennedy are used in a very useful way. Throughout the entire speech there are different images that will come up to make the speech more genuine since the pictures and videos will attest to what Obama is saying. At random parts in the speech pictures and videos will come up making the speech more realistic and it makes it more emotional and heartfelt then if there were no instances of multi-media. There are also pictures of Obama and Ted laughing and having a good time showing the viewers how they were friends. Along with these pictures and videos of Ted, the camera will sometimes pan across the audience in the booths showing the emotion on their faces making the youtube video more sincere.


Ted Kennedy was one of the rare people who always looked at the world in a positive light. He would always try to find something good out of his often sad and tragic times. Early on in his life his brothers teased him but he learned to brush it off and this is maybe where he learned to view the positives in life. As Obama says, he went through lots of hardships and it would have been easy for him to give in, but this was not the person Ted proved to be. He pushed on and stated, “Individual faults and frailties are no reason to give in.” The more he suffered the more he noticed others suffering and the more he felt obliged to help these people. For example, for every family that lost someone on 9/11 he would write a letter to them annually saying how sorry he was for their loss.


Obama speaks very highly of Ted in a very dramatic way that makes you feel incredibly bad for Ted because of all his hardships. Obama calls him resilient, humourous and amazingly selfless. Ted was also very emotionally intelligent and would ask people whether they are okay. He would also send birthday cards and thank you letter when need be and would show everyone love when so much sadness filled his life. Obama also calls him the greatest legislator of our time and says, “We do not weep for him because of his prestige attached to his name, but rather, because we loved this kind and tender hero.” Obama also uses lots of metaphors in his speech like, “as tempted more, the more able to endure,” and, “as more exposed to suffering and distress, the more alive to tenderness.” Obama goes on saying, “He persevered through pain and tragedy, not for the sake of ambition or vanity, not for wealth, or power, but only for the people and the country that he loved.” It is personification when Obama says, “We can still here him, his voice bellowing through the senate chamber fists pounding the table.” Overall, Obama’s eulogy was astonishingly genuine and sincere. Ted Kennedy will be remembered for a long time as, “The happy warrior.”

Blog #1 Born To Run

The novel, Born To Run, by Christopher McDougall, is about the evolution of running shoes and how runners develop. It is a true story about Chris who discovers a tribe of Mexican runners living in the mountains of Mexico. This tribe lives a simple lifestyle of eating, hunting, drinking (alcohol), and running. Chris goes looking for these people for answers when he discovers that maybe running shoes are hurting the everyday runner. He begins to wonder that maybe the human was meant to run in barefoot, as the Mexican tribe does who never get injured and are far less prone to diseases than the modern worlds people. Chris eventually finds these people and sets up an ultra-marathon race with this tribe and some of the best ultra-marathoners in the world. The race is an extremely intense 100 kilometres through the tough terrain of the Mexican mountains and you will have to read the book to see who breaks the tape first after a grueling 100 kilometres.

The element of character development was a big one in this novel. I mentioned the Mexican Tribesman before who are called the Tarahumara. The Tarahumara, or the running people, were kicked out of their land by modern Mexico’s drug lords and were forced to flee into the mountains. This caused the Tarahumara to despise the people of the modern world avoiding them at all costs. As Chris and the other ultra runners ran alongside these people in this tough race, they bonded and the Tarahumara began to forgive the people of the modern world. The Tarahumara realized that some of the people from the modern world were not evil and corrupted like the drug lords of Mexico. Chris’ use of similes and different comparisons made the writing very appealing to read and quite exciting, especially if you are a runner reading it. Chris has convinced me to give barefoot running a shot and to see whether or not it will improve my injured hips and knees.

A few of my favorite quotations from this book I will show you, “Sure, plenty of people will throw up excuses about Kenyans having some kind of mutant muscle fiber, but this isn’t about why other people got faster; it’s about how we got slower.” This is one of my favorite quotes of the book because the number one reason that runners don’t give it their all is because of lame excuses and that is what I try to eliminate from my running. Another quotation is fairly similar talking about how running shoes hurt the everyday runner, “Lost in all the fireworks between Ted and Caballo was an important point; running shoes may be the most destructive force to ever hit the human foot.” I like this one because I have wanted to know what has been so harmful to feet to make them more prone to injury than before there were running shoes. Chris also has a really interesting writing style that would keep even non-runners interested. The last quotation I want to share is long so I cut it down so it may not make sense but I will explain it, “That’s big bucks for sneaks you’ll have to toss in the garbage in ninety days, but at least you’ll never limp again. Right? Sorry.” It is talking about how the most advanced running shoes in the world are extremely high tech and even the shoes Adidas spent three million dollars and eight years to build will not make the injury rate of runners decrease.

This book was extremely informative and I will be taking the advice of Chris and the Tarahumara to stay away from overbuilt running shoes. I recommend this book to every runner out there who has been injured or may be wearing overbuilt shoes.

By Andrew Irwin