nocto

Hmmm, I see I wrote in my writeup of A Fall in Denver, the second book in this series that the book took a while to get going. This is the third in the series and the same is true. If I was subjecting books to a 50 page test, or even a 100 page test, then I don't think I would have finished this.

I enjoy the decently plotted scientifically bent plots and Em Hansen solves mysteries using skills she's learnt as a geologist. I enjoy her mixed-upped-ness and her family failings and her not quite with it attitude to life. There's lots here that I love but I just don't like the beginnings.

One of the problems with amateur sleuths is that they have trouble falling over dead bodies all the time in books, something a professional detective can get away with. I do think the author has done an admirable job of making Em's detective work realistic by tieing the necessary shennaigans into a plot thicker than crude oil but I think something is definitely missing from the beginning of these books. I'd either like a ten page summary of the first hundred pages to get me into the heart of the mystery faster or I'd like a mini-mystery, related to the main one or not, to get tied up earlier in the book.

At the moment I don't feel much like trying book four but I might give Andrews another chance to write a beginning before I write her off because I really do enjoy her middles and endings.

Purchased on 28th February 2000.

Partway through this I thought it might turn out to be one of the most stunning mysteries I'd ever read but I felt it trailed off a bit towards the end and perhaps went on a little too long to acheive its full potential

The gimmick here is that the narrator Kay Farrow suffers from an achromatic eye condition which means that she can only perceive shades of grey and no colour at all. She makes her living as a black and white photographer and is following a group of street children and sex workers in San Francisco as material for her next book. One teenage boy she gets very close to turns up dismembered and Kay feels that no one will investigate his death properly if she doesn't.

This is a cracking story on many levels, great descriptions of San Francisco, some very interesting characters, a fascinating premise for the story and a central character with a disability that becomes part of the tale and isn't just a hook to hang a moral on. I'm glad to learn that Hunt has written a followup book Trick Shot that also features Kay as I'd like to see her again but this did feel very much like a standalone.

Purchased on 24th February 2002.

This is probably the least mysterious and least psychological story I've read from Vine/Rendell. The action takes place in a small Norfolk village where Jenny Warner is caring for Stella Newlands who is dying of lung cancer in a residential home. It's the kind of gradually unfolding story that Vine is good at where you aren't quite sure what the real mystery is going to turn out to be. Only in this case I didn't think that there was really anything discovered that was worth the build up.

I enjoyed the book but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking for mystery, thrills or suspense. What we have here is a really interesting story that might have worked well in a general fiction book but didn't really fit into the genre it was billed as.

The only thing that was really wrong with this book for me was that I read an edition that had been butchered from its original British English into American English for what seemed to be no particularly good reason. I can't believe that any vaguely literate American would have trouble figuring out that "ladybirds" were "ladybugs" or that a "plough" is a "plow" seeing as these words are all used in context. These changes dragged me out of the setting. I suppose I deserve that for reading an edition that wasn't aimed at me but it has left me wondering what else gets changed between the author and the reader and what on earth publishers must think of their reader's intelligence.

Purchased on 17th January 2001.