Laurie > Recent Status Updates

I’m about 1/3 through this book and I love it so far.

Good cat content in this one

“He had seen today a look in her eyes which showed she was on the verge of one of those spiritual crises possible only to women whose temperament is strong, but so is their will. Such characters do not grow like a plant, but are convulsed overnight when the sticking-point is passed.”

I’m enjoying the book so far, but Anne is absolutely enraging as a character.

I’m absolutely loving this book so far but I hope I’m wrong about whodunnit because if I’m right it was too obvious! Update forthcoming…

The premise of this book is insane from a 2024 perspective. The book’s “heroes” set out to clear a man from a charge of murder; not because he’s innocent - they believe that he’s guilty! - but because they feel more sorry for this guy having his life ruined than they do for the woman they believe that he murdered. And we’re just supposed to be like “Yeah makes sense! Good idea!”

This is fun so far. It incorporates a few of my favorite tropes: an unreliable narrator and a fake murder mystery party turned real.

Ok now I’m 85% done and I seriously felt like the other reviewers read a different book than I did. Maybe the last 15% will really piss me off but so far it’s hilarious (I’ve laughed out loud many times and I rarely do that when reading), the characters are super engaging, and the story is interesting and the revelations are surprising. I’ll have to read the negative reviews in more detail when I’m done.

To be fair, I’m only 1/4 through the book so far but so far I’m wondering why it has so many bad reviews. It’s hilarious and the characters are all great. I’ve laughed out loud so many times. The mystery part is taking its time getting going and I dislike criminal syndicates (morally, but more so narratively), but I’m having a ball.

I was confused at first by the many negative-to-lukewarm reviews of this book because the first several chapters are engaging and fun, with expressive prose, smart dialogue, and an intriguing plot, but at chapter 7 the way Vere (by far the most interesting and appealing character) is characterized by the main character as some psycho hussy when he’s the one who’s consistently been an asshole is driving me nuts.

This was great

This book has a lot of things I dislike unfortunately. It was written in the 1990s but is set in the mid-to-late 19th century. As a result it has all the cringeworthy gender and disability politics of the 1990s mixed with an artificial old-timeyness that I find irritating in modern historical fiction. It’s also unbelievably slow and repetitive.

It’s interesting that this series is the same author and translatlor as the Detective Kaga series because the style seems so different (better, for me).

I’m about halfway through this book and enjoying the hell out of it so far. It’s my first E.C.R. Lorac and I could only find it in paper form, but it’s very enjoyable so far.

“So many people seem to me to be neither bad nor good, but simply, you know… very silly.” - Miss Marple