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Rain Morgan Mystery #1
Patterns in the Dust
Patterns in the dust
Hardcover
First published July 1, 1985
379 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Lesley Grant-Adamson
27 booksLesley Grant-Adamson (nee Lesley Heycock) was born in Islington, north London in 1942, and spent most of her childhood in Trealaw in the Rhondda.
She now lives in Debenham, Suffolk, but during the 1980s and 1990s lived in Islington, the scene of several of her novels. Since 1968 she has been married to Andrew Grant-Adamson, a communications consultant and lecturer in journalism at City University and Westminster University. Together they wrote A Season in Spain (Pavilion), a portrait of the Alpujarra region of Andalusia where they lived from 1991-3.
She was educated at Dame Alice Owen School and then worked as a journalist in London and the provinces until the early Seventies when she joined the London staff of The Guardian. In 1981 she left The Guardian to write fiction.
She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Royal Society of Literature, the Welsh Academy, East Anglia Writers and the Crime Writers’ Association.
She now lives in Debenham, Suffolk, but during the 1980s and 1990s lived in Islington, the scene of several of her novels. Since 1968 she has been married to Andrew Grant-Adamson, a communications consultant and lecturer in journalism at City University and Westminster University. Together they wrote A Season in Spain (Pavilion), a portrait of the Alpujarra region of Andalusia where they lived from 1991-3.
She was educated at Dame Alice Owen School and then worked as a journalist in London and the provinces until the early Seventies when she joined the London staff of The Guardian. In 1981 she left The Guardian to write fiction.
She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Royal Society of Literature, the Welsh Academy, East Anglia Writers and the Crime Writers’ Association.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 2, 2023
When I started reading this book, I loved it. Grant-Adamson creates a wonderful sense of place and introduces some realistic and well-rounded characters. For the first couple of chapters, I was fully expecting this to become one of my favourite crime novels. Sadly, it all started to unravel very soon after.
Rain Morgan escapes from her hectic life as a journalist to a quiet Somerset village for a short holiday. She has barely unpacked when the local archaeologist discovers a dead body. The identity of this body is painfully obvious to the reader from a very early stage, yet neither Rain nor the police seem to suspect a thing. Rain puts her own life at risk trying to find evidence to convict the murderer, yet her 'proof' doesn't really add anything to the case at all (and was something that could easily have been checked by the police anyway, since it concerns what can be seen from a particular viewpoint). Still more strangely, although she is convinced of the killer's identity, she doesn't guess who the victim is. After a very narrow escape from becoming the next murder victim, Rain takes her 'evidence' to the police, only to find that they already know the identify of the first corpse and have all the proof that they need to arrest the guilty person.
I found this novel very frustrating. With just a few tweaks, it would have been possible for Rain to contribute something really useful to the investigation, instead of which, she just blunders around, getting in the way. I also lost sympathy for her because of the way she treats her boyfriend. She goes on holiday on her own because his work commitments mean he is unable to join her. She's barely arrived in the village before she starts an affair with a local man who ends up moving in with her. At the end of the story, she packs up and prepares to return home to her boyfriend, apparently totally unrepentant that she's been cheating on him. So she's a disloyal partner as well as a useless detective.
Rain Morgan escapes from her hectic life as a journalist to a quiet Somerset village for a short holiday. She has barely unpacked when the local archaeologist discovers a dead body. The identity of this body is painfully obvious to the reader from a very early stage, yet neither Rain nor the police seem to suspect a thing. Rain puts her own life at risk trying to find evidence to convict the murderer, yet her 'proof' doesn't really add anything to the case at all (and was something that could easily have been checked by the police anyway, since it concerns what can be seen from a particular viewpoint). Still more strangely, although she is convinced of the killer's identity, she doesn't guess who the victim is. After a very narrow escape from becoming the next murder victim, Rain takes her 'evidence' to the police, only to find that they already know the identify of the first corpse and have all the proof that they need to arrest the guilty person.
I found this novel very frustrating. With just a few tweaks, it would have been possible for Rain to contribute something really useful to the investigation, instead of which, she just blunders around, getting in the way. I also lost sympathy for her because of the way she treats her boyfriend. She goes on holiday on her own because his work commitments mean he is unable to join her. She's barely arrived in the village before she starts an affair with a local man who ends up moving in with her. At the end of the story, she packs up and prepares to return home to her boyfriend, apparently totally unrepentant that she's been cheating on him. So she's a disloyal partner as well as a useless detective.
August 23, 2024
Disappointing
I began reading this book and finding it fascinating, but in the end, it totally failed to keep my interest. In a word, it was SLOW. Well-written, with a plethora of clues, but slow as watching paint dry.
The main character, Rain, could have been a fascinating sleuth, but she somehow seemed to do nothing but make assumptions as she stumbled about the edges of the mystery. The relationship between herself and her boyfriend (who does not accompany her on her little vacation jaunt) was obviously pathetic; she's quick to have an affair, which I found distasteful. End the relationship you're in before beginning another. In short, I suppose I just didn't like Rain much.
I was a bit tickled by the British English glossary at the end. Ninety percent of the terms included are either totally familiar to readers of British mystery or watchers of British TV shows; many are universal to Yanks, Brits, and other countries these days. But things that are quite unfamiliar to an American reader are left totally unexplained: what in the name of heaven, for instance, is a Friendly Society banner? And essential fact about Rain's survival, but I haven't the faintest notion what it is!
I began reading this book and finding it fascinating, but in the end, it totally failed to keep my interest. In a word, it was SLOW. Well-written, with a plethora of clues, but slow as watching paint dry.
The main character, Rain, could have been a fascinating sleuth, but she somehow seemed to do nothing but make assumptions as she stumbled about the edges of the mystery. The relationship between herself and her boyfriend (who does not accompany her on her little vacation jaunt) was obviously pathetic; she's quick to have an affair, which I found distasteful. End the relationship you're in before beginning another. In short, I suppose I just didn't like Rain much.
I was a bit tickled by the British English glossary at the end. Ninety percent of the terms included are either totally familiar to readers of British mystery or watchers of British TV shows; many are universal to Yanks, Brits, and other countries these days. But things that are quite unfamiliar to an American reader are left totally unexplained: what in the name of heaven, for instance, is a Friendly Society banner? And essential fact about Rain's survival, but I haven't the faintest notion what it is!
October 3, 2024
A cozy crime mystery
Rain Morgan, a gossip columnist in an indifferent relationship, takes a break to stay at her live-in boyfriend’s cousins house where she happens to be when a body is found. With an apparently inept police investigation Rain starts her own investigation after another murder takes place.
Easy to read, I didn’t really ‘get’ Rain’s character and had to remember that Rain wasn’t the weather. Drifting through the plot and a new relationship, there was some tension towards the end achieved by a lot of dithering and a satisfactory, if somewhat anti-climactic ending.
Rain Morgan, a gossip columnist in an indifferent relationship, takes a break to stay at her live-in boyfriend’s cousins house where she happens to be when a body is found. With an apparently inept police investigation Rain starts her own investigation after another murder takes place.
Easy to read, I didn’t really ‘get’ Rain’s character and had to remember that Rain wasn’t the weather. Drifting through the plot and a new relationship, there was some tension towards the end achieved by a lot of dithering and a satisfactory, if somewhat anti-climactic ending.
January 15, 2020
Barely qualifies as tart-noir but I'm shelving it there anyway because I bought it with a pile of others that definitely are, and the impulse was the same.
Short, sweet, a little dull, with a heroine who is good at reading people and asking questions (as a gossip columnist should be) and an ending that thinks it's more suspenseful than it is.
All the way through I kept thinking, Agatha Christie would have done this with more conversation and less description, and that's my final word on this. An 80s Christie-alike that doesn't touch the Queen but pays a nice enough homage.
Short, sweet, a little dull, with a heroine who is good at reading people and asking questions (as a gossip columnist should be) and an ending that thinks it's more suspenseful than it is.
All the way through I kept thinking, Agatha Christie would have done this with more conversation and less description, and that's my final word on this. An 80s Christie-alike that doesn't touch the Queen but pays a nice enough homage.
January 17, 2024
A Seemingly Light Trip - Ending with Murder
An innocent little trip for one because Work got in the way. But nothing is as it seems & Rain sets out to prove something has been going on and it isn’t good. And she
knows who the murderer is. She just has to prove it! And she does!!
An innocent little trip for one because Work got in the way. But nothing is as it seems & Rain sets out to prove something has been going on and it isn’t good. And she
knows who the murderer is. She just has to prove it! And she does!!
March 28, 2024
I got very frustrated with this book. The heroine is not very heroic. Things that needed explanation were not explained; things that should have been were not. The end was unsatisfactory in my opinion. I won't be continuing this series.
December 30, 2024
2.5/5 stars an average read- figured out the murderer before 1/2 the book was read. No surprises or twists here- what you see is what you get. Also main character Rain was not fully developed
December 10, 2023
A bit chaotic and hard to follow.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews