The whodunnit as therapeutic distractor

I went over to the Lit & Phil library at Newcastle the other day and stocked up with a pile of their excellent whodunnits. I find that I need to read easy page-turners in order to prevent my mind from wandering into what-ifs and what-has-beens that trigger bouts of emotional turmoil without doing any good whatever. I have just finished J.R.L. Anderson’s Death in the greenhouse. It was good to be taken back to an England where it was by no means certain that one would be able to find a telephone to use or whether the person who you wanted to contact would even be connected to the landline telephone exchange. This was a world devoid of much of the electronic detritus that is so typical of today’s quotidian experience.

Therapeutic distractors

Today, I shall move on to Douglas Cark’s The Monday theory.  Things, as they say, continue to be labile.