nocto

I'm finding it hard to say very much about this book without giving the game away.

It's great to see an author writing a genuine trilogy, not a series that runs out of steam after three books, or a series that goes on and on after it ought to have run out of steam, but a real story that takes three books to tell and each book is a separate (and good) story in itself.

To talk very much about the plot in this book would require spoiling the first two books to a degree (and that's exactly what the blurb on the back cover does). Don't even think of reading this book by itself, series order matters here, go and read Garnethill and Exile first.

The worst I can say of this third volume is that some parts of the story that aren't related to the story arc of the trilogy are a bit weak in themselves but the rest is wonderful and Mina knows how to end a book.

I waited expectantly this book to come out in paperback (have to have matching sets on the shelves you know), but whatever Denise Mina comes up with next will be a must buy hardback for me.

Purchased on 28th June 2002.

This book wins some kind of award for taking me the longest time to read. Not that I can blame that on the book. I read the first half of the book in September 2000 before real life got in my way. When I got back to it recently I didn't really reread the beginning. I skimmed the first part to pick up the thread of the story again and this may be why I was disappointed in the book.

The main character didn't really come to life for me and I think that finding the protagonist interesting is almost essential for an ongoing series. This is a modern English village murder and whilst most of what goes on in Badger's Drift is believable (perhaps not simultaneously but it is fiction after all) it just didn't work for me.

I can see how I came to abandon this book even though I'd previously enjoyed a standalone by the same author. I have another book in this series on my bookshelf and I'll try it out some time as I don't really think i gave this one a fair chance but I suspect I'll give the rest of the series a miss.

Purchased on 29th January 2000.

[on historical novels in general]

I'm not a big reader of historical novels full stop, whether mysteries or otherwise. This is odd because many of my favourite books as a child were historical now I come to think of it and also because when I do read something historical I generally enjoy the change.

My expectations for a historical mystery are that they will be fact laden, boring and tediously correct and my worries are that they will be anachronistic and miseducate me about the time period (and I know that's not consistent with the first bit of the sentence). Even knowing that neither my expectations or my worries are usually borne out and I enjoy my occassional trips through time doesn't really make me want to read much more historical stuff on a regular basis.

[on thehistorical setting]

I'm still in the middle of the book but everything seems pretty much chronistically feasible to me though I don't really know very much about the time or the place to judge. I did notice several things that I remembered reading at the museum at Ellis Island and was torn between "ooh yes, I remember reading about that" and "can I have some titbits that don't come straight out of the museum please".

I thought that idea (Molly thinking about getting a flat with Michael Larkin) was quite reasonable actually. As I read it she wasn't intending shacking up as a couple just sharing the rent in a place where extended families living together was the usual thing. Since she's alone with no family network to fall back on she had the idea of making one up.

[on coincidences]

Molly just so happened to walk into a house where she was welcomed in Liverpool and then the occupants just so happened to have a reason and a ticket to take her to America; After that I kind of decided that I'd have to flow with the lucky breaks/coincidences if I was going to enjoy this book. I haven't finished yet so I don't know what coincidences are looming in the later chapters but I'm not going to be surprised by them now and I think the author's set the rules up as "coincidences are allowed in this book" if that makes any sense.

Purchased on 20th May 2002.

[My comments are taken from a mailing list discussion and as such contain spoilers!]

[on the setting, characters]

Yes, the setting definitely came to life for me. I liked the setting in the first book but this one seemed a lot better. I'm not sure if Gur was consistent in the characters, I felt some things about Michael jarred a bit early in the book but I can't remember what now. The characters didn't quite flow smoothly from the first book but I thought this book was a lot smoother in itself.

I liked seeing more of Eli and Tzilla - oh that was it! - I didn't remember Eli and Tzilla being married in the first book, did I just miss that entirely? I think I probably missed a lot in _The Saturday Morning Murder_.

Of the non recurring characters I really liked Racheli, the admin assistant who appeared early in the book but she wasn't seen for a long time after that. I didn't really like any of the suspects very much at all.

[on the plot]

Yes, the plotting worked for me. I think the strength of this story is the same as in the first book: that the motives and reasons behind the murders are tied very closely to the setting. For the rest of the series I'm going to expect that the crimes have been perpetrated not for the usual reasons of money or love (in most mystery stories anyway) but for reasons like poetry fraud that only make sense in the setting of the story.

I found the conclusion satisfactory though I did really like the idea of the two victims having killed each other. I really wanted Iddo to have killed Shaul before he went off diving, I think that would have been a neat plot device but it wasn't to be.

[on scenes, pacing, setting]

I'm never any good at this question. The scene that sticks in my head is the one where they look at Iddo's body on the beach, I found it really quite gory and a bit of a hide behind the settee scene which wasn't what I was expecting from Gur.

I found this book much better paced, I was expecting to find it slow going but I ripped through the middle of it quite entralled by it all, which surprised me quite a lot.

The setting is pretty much the most important element in these books, they would be completely different if they were set in more open environments. I found the university setting much easier to drop into than the psychoanalysis setting of the first book and I also got more of a feeling for Jerusalem in this book.

[comparisons to earlier books, summary]

I definitely found this book stronger than the first and a much more satisfying read. I put off reading it for a while because I feared I might get bored with it but that was far from the case. The pacing was better, I found it easier to keep track of the characters and I enjoyed the peek into a different world given by the author.

Overall I'd probably rate the book somewhere about three and threequarters stars out of five and I hope the next book reads as smoothly as this one and not as jerkily as the first did.

Purchased on 15th January 2002.

A copy of this book is available on BookMooch.