The Awdrey-Gore Legacy, by Edward Gorey

What fun!  

 

The Awdrey-Gore Legacy is classic Gorey, and at first glance appears almost indistinguishable from the rest of Gorey’s oeuvre.  What makes this book stand out from the rest of Gorey’s work is that it is like a love letter to formulaic mysteries, replacing the usual sort of plot and sensible conclusion with a big, open sense of the hilarious oddness of the whole “mystery” genre itself.

The “mystery” as a popular genre was originally constructed around stories of intelligent people using logic, reason and observation to make sense out of criminal acts and restore justice to the world. The Awdrey-Gore Legacy seems like a classic mystery... there is certainly a murdered author, and what seem to be notes toward a murder mystery, that might be related to the author’s murder. But the progress of the book doesn’t follow reason, or common sense, or logic--instead it rewards our leisurely observation, moving from one unreasonable possibility to another, full of clues that add up to more of a mystery than we started with  Instead of reading an ordinary type of story, we find at the end that we’ve been dallying in an imaginary world of beautiful eccentricity and cryptic motives (the Gorey world) instead of an ordinary world of problems that can be solved.  A classic mystery, perhaps--but one half-seen, through a black & white kaleidoscope. 

Along the way, of course, we get plenty of jolly puns and wordplay, and the trademark Gorey wit. Adding to the charm of the writing, the physical book itself is beautiful--and the illustrations reward all of the attention you give them.  Enjoy!