MemeMachineGo!

In the past is another country department, I recently read the first of Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr burglar mystery series, Burglars Can't Be Choosers, from 1977. That's not all that long ago, a year I can remember as an at least modestly sapient being.

And yet there were some drastic reminders of how long ago it was. The narrator sees fit to comment that an elevator didn't have an operator. When musing about the attractive, probably for-show books in an expensive apartment, he thinks that the pages have probably never even been cut. He not only speaks of "loiding" a lock, but he really means celluloid.

It's a decent mystery, with a good twist, and a fun narrative voice, but is replete with the kind of contrivance that so often frustrates me with mystery novels. (I've gotten tired of staging elaborate traps requiring uncannily accurate prediction of how the bad guy will jump. But I'm still reading Nero Wolfe novels, so this tiredness can be overcome by other attractions...)