I was so excited when I saw there were new Hillary Greene books. Back in my KU addicted days, I read the whole series in under three months, I was so obsessed.
It's been a few years since that flurry of activity and I don't know if it's rose-tinged nostalgia glasses but this was so disappointing? She's gone from being a compelling character to a bit of a know-it-all, holier than thou, who always knows the perfect thing to say and mysteriously knows everything, and has infinite resources of experiences/hobbies. In one of the books, she randomly has the power of recognising a rare, random bird from a good distance away, noting how tiny it is... but she is also continuously lamenting her fading eyesight due to age and not being able to see that far and resenting the need for glasses. She alone seems to notice VERY BLATANT or EXTREMELY SUBTLE clues, and the rest of her team remain clueless and trust her blindly, noting that she is an omnipresent deity in the criminal world.
Further, I have found that in three of the four new books, I picked up on the clue that denoted the killer and the reason the second it was dropped, very early on in the book. I'm not sure if that's because I'm a bit of an omnipresent deity myself, or the writing has become quite heavy handed, but unfortunately I think this series or this author is no longer for me. The repeated info-dumping (which always praised Hillary Greene's past, multiple times per book, with each character having to individually realise that she was a quite good looking, ridiculously intelligent, well-respected professional), the repeated jokes about Puff the Crap Wagon, and the random head-hopping, sometimes multiple times on a page, frustrated me enough to pull me out of the story.
I'm sure it didn't help that I read all four of the new books within 3 days, which no doubt compounded the above frustrations.
It's sad, because I really loved this series and was so happy when I saw they were back, and part of me wants to read some of the original series to see if I'm misremembering how good they were... but I truly LOVED Hillary Greene's character originally, and much like my old college boyfriend, we have clearly grown up and apart, and it's time to move on. I would still recommend these books to other, less critical and voracious readers of crime. I'm sure my mother would be awed by the criminal each time, but I personally need something different from my mysteries, moving forward.
This book was the worst of the new lot in my opinion, with its heavy reliance on Murder on the Orient Express gimmick, but while also really creating a very unrealistic murder scenario. And then adding in a second murder attempt/crime, while failing to develop the original crime or suspects or characters. I couldn't even remember the descriptions of half the cast, other than the stereotypical Irish Man Jockey, the Old American Rich Dad and Spoiled American Rich Daughter. It all felt like a tired attempt at creating characters by relying on blatant stereotypes instead of actual creativity and development.
Had to speed read through about 60% of it so I could conclude it and properly remove it from my brain and kindle, and was genuinely cranky about it the whole time.