Walter as Bach fan

Having got as far as episode 2.15 of Fringe — where Walter spills the beans to Olivia — I found my brain snagged on the piece of Bach that 80s Walter puts on when he returns home to Peter and Elizabeth. I was pretty sure it was the opening to an aria, but I couldn't remember whether it was from one of the passions or whether it was from somewhere else entirely. It wasn't until this morning, I caught myself adding in the words, that I realised it was the obbligato opening to the Benedictus from the B-minor Mass:

(Walter's enthusiasm for Bach goes all the way back to ep 1.3, when he asks Peter to play the Mass in A-minor on the piano. Which as any Bach nerd knows doesn't make much sense: Bach didn't actually write a mass in A-minor. So perhaps Water was thinking of the missa brevis in A-major BWV 234 or, more likely, the Mass in B-minor BWV 232, but I don't suppose it matters much since Peter refuses to play it)

The things opticians ask...

While most of the optician's pre-exam questions were easy, one totally flumoxed me: "Do you have any hobbies that involve your eyes?" Luckily, I managed to keep my instinctive answer — all of them! — to myself and instead asked what they expected. Which turned out to be sports. So sports did I reply.

In the end, I passed both my eye exams with flying colours; although I somehow allowed myself to be persuaded to buy a new pair of glasses to match my current prescription. It feels like a bit of a waste, given that I almost never wear glasses and could quite happily get buy with my old prescription, but they were keen for me to upgrade and offered me such a hefty discount that it offset most of my doubts. I suspect, had I told them I don't drive — I usually answer "can but don't", which obviously counts as a yes — they wouldn't have been nearly so fussed...

1222

Back to Sweden for Anne Holt's 1222, a murder mystery set in the increasingly claustrophobic confines of a snow-bound hotel in the aftermath of a serious train accident.

When the train to Bergen derails just before the Finse tunnel, the passengers find themselves evacuated to a nearby hotel to ride out the worst winter storm anyone can remember. The following morning, the residents of the hotel wake up to find that one of their number, a famous priest called Cato Hammer, has been murdered — shot in the face at close range. Cut off from the outside world, the hotel manager turns to the only resource she can find to hand: grumpy former detective Hanne Wilhelmsen, who really doesn't want to get involved. Eventually Hanne softens her position and agrees to help. But being confined to the lobby by her wheelchair, she is forced to rely on a core group of fellow investigators — the hotel manager, an out-doorsy lawyer who lives near by, a doctor from the crash, and a truculent teenager — none of whom she entirely trusts, to provide her with the information she needs to piece things together.

In classic Agatha Christie tradition, the cast of trapped residents includes a large number of unlikely characters (and likely suspects) who aren't always who they seem to be. Confined to the hotel, with the storm steadily growing worse, with a murderer on the loose, and with dark rumours circulating about a enigmatic armoured carriage attached to the train, the residents become increasingly difficult and it is all that the hotel's management can do to prevent a full-scale rebellion.

Although the final reveal isn't entirely unexpected, the claustrophobic hotel and its worrying decent into anarchy are very nicely done. Hanne Wilhelmsen, too, is an enjoyable protagonist: initially extremely stand-offish and determined not to get involved — an implicit consequence of the attack that left her wheelchair-bound — the murder bring her out of herself and makes her realise that she is going to have to start trusting people again. Given that 1222 is the 8th book to feature Wilhelmsen, I only hope it won't be too long until the others are translated into English.