This is the first book in this series to completely fail to interest me. Though I’ve found Laurie King’s favourite theological themes to get a little wearing in the past I’d rather read about them than the interminable trips across Dartmoor that make up this book. Something here just didn’t work for me.

At the end of the book there are about a hundred pages when things come together and the plot becomes interesting but the rest of the book has little mystery to entrance the reader and I found a lot of it pretty boring. Mary doesn’t like Dartmoor much, I can’t say I blame her and i’ll be glad to see her back somewhere more suited to her.

And then there’s the sex. I’ve no problem with sex in books whether the author chooses to be explicit or implicit. It just got too twee when Holmes “deduced what was needed tonight with a minimum of clues…” time after time.

King can do a lot better than this and I’m disappointed that this book failed to connect with me.