Volume 3 of Bad Machinery, The Case of the Simple Soul, finds Tackleford beset by a series of fires over summer vacation. Unfortunately, our mystery-solving squads are less than full strength, as Jack and Shauna are now in luuuurve, and spend all their time smooching or staring into each other's eyes.
Disgusting, and yet, it opens up new avenues for investigation. In between discussing whether being dismembered is an activity better shared, Shauna and Jack discover a large, shirtless man who lives under a bridge. What sheltered existences, that they've never seen a meth addict. Jack doesn't want to interrupt his summer of luuuurve with an investigation, so Shauna passes word to Charlotte and Mildred.
Who promptly decide what this guy needs is some spiffing up, so he can meet a nice lady. I, uh, eh, but, sigh, OK. I now see what Shauna brings to the table: she's the only one not completely bonkers. Though Mildred and Charlotte seem to get along, Mildred doesn't have the pull on Lotte that Shauna does. At least in terms of distracting her from disastrous ideas like washing a fox. Meanwhile, Sonny and Linton are, despite their best efforts, being drawn into investigating the fires by the new kid at school.
Colm, when not nicking things from the store for thrills - I assume that's what, 'for the craic' means - develops an immediate and doomed crush on Charlotte. Although he seems to get his head turned by most every woman. The French assistant, the local scandal rag writer Erin Winters. Just like a real teenage boy! I miss those confusing, hormonal days. Well, mostly I miss my hair, and my shoulder not making clicking noises when I rotate it. Also, I note here that according to Linton, Charlotte's derisive nickname is Potty Grote. Which makes me think, given childrens' desire to rhyme, her last name is pronounced "grotty,", when all this time I assumed it was "groat."
Anyway, when things aren't progressing fast enough, Colm passes the info about Troll on to the fire department. In John Allison's world, firemen are apparently what cops here in the U.S. are like: Aggro lunatics with too little supervision and too much access to dangerous implements. But it's the girls' unsuccessful attempt to send the big fella on a date that gets a full-blown mob going. This does allow Shauna and Mildred's dads to show they're sensible people who recognize the dangers of mobs, but does not help Miss Perks find a proper fella.
From there, we get a few red herrings before a last-second, out of left field reveal of the true firebug. Incidentally and totally not significant, wink-wink, this is the first story that involves Charlotte's future mystery-solving sidekick Claire. Who has a huge crush on Colm and is the daughter of the fire chief. This story demonstrates a side of her I'd not seen any evidence of in Wicked Things, so it was quite surprising seeing how she started.
2 comments:
You were right first time, I think it is Grote/"Groat". I think the "Potty" is supposed to rhyme with "Lottie".
("Potty" means "insane" in British English, which fits Charlotte well.)
"For the craic" is indeed something along the lines of "for the thrill". It's from Irish, but it's crossed the Irish Sea and has made it into British English, although some dictionaries suggest "craic" itself came from an older northern English usage of "crack" to mean the same thing.
OK, I hadn't considered they were replacing Lottie with Potty. Clearly I was not much good at mocking nicknames when I was a kid.
"Craic" being from Irish tracks, since I think Colm is from Ireland, given the socks little Claire knits him in the colors of Ireland's flag. Thanks for the info!
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