My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood C+
This is very much the archetype of "cozy mysteries" i.e. it involves ladies, one of which is at least elderly, investigating a murder in their village. In my search on Amazon for both mysteries and humous stories, this appeared on both lists, so I decided to give it a try. Unlike most of the cozy mysteries, this book was traditionally published. And, I discovered after starting it, that it has been turned into a TV show that can be seen in the States on PBS's Masterpiece Mysteries. All of which gave me confidence that it had more going for it than that retired assassin book I tried a couple of weeks ago. Was it warranted?
Well... Yes. Maybe. I did read it to the end, which says something, more than desperation. And while it was written tongue in cheek with a genial nod to the conventions of the sub-genre to traditional publishing standards, and not to be taken too seriously, it was, okay-ish. However, it not only committed the mortal sin, in my opinion, of mysteries, i.e. having two murders, but it had three. Not good. The only saving grace is that, as I said, the story was not to be taken seriously.
You have the mystery of these murders. And though you might figure out the mystery in a general way, I don't think this is a reader solvable who-done-it. The setting is a small town set on the upper Thames River. The main character is an elderly widow living in a somewhat run down house on the river. She hears the gunshot that marks the first murder while swimming in the river, and thus gets involved in the mystery. Along the way, she meets a dog-watcher who knew the second victim, and the young wife of the curate who feels obliged to be the perfect housewife of the curate, but gets tempted by the adventure, along with the female police detective in charge of the case. The characters, though I presume fairly blog standard for this type of story, are the saving grace of the story, well written, likeable, each a character in their own right. The story earns its "C+" on the basis of these characters.
The exciting climax was, in my opinion, too long, too over wrought, really quite over the top. I mean, this is the first book in a series, the main character is going to live... I found myself skimming through it, which says something... And the explanation of the mystery... motivations for the murders seemed rather thin, but I suspect that is par for the course. Bottom line; a good cozy mystery if that's your thing. I'm not a mystery fan, but if you are, you might want to consider this a "B" grade story or more.
The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods DNF 67%
This book had several things going for it. It has a 4.1 star rating on Goodreads with 48K ratings. It has a first person narration, though with third person interludes from the past and a view of the romantic male lead's life. It was set somewhere else; in France. But it also had downsides. First off, it is a contemporary story, which I generally dislike. And as it went along it began to fall into well worn tropes...
Gave it a good go, but alas, eventually I found that I had no desire to keep reading, since life, at my age, is to short to force myself to read something I'm not really enjoying.
The premise is that a 30 year old woman has been staying at home to take care of her mother with Parkinson's disease. After her mother dies, she, at the urging of her father, sets out to start her own life, applying for and getting accepted as an assistant manager of a bakery on the Rue de Paris... Which she assumed was in Paris, but it is actually a small bakery in Compiegne, too small to really need an assistant manager. Which is one of several mysteries going on in the story including a maybe ghost, that we discover as we go along. Luckily, murder is not one of them, at least as far as I read. There is also a budding instant-romance plot with a very nice, rich, man as well.
Where the story goes off the rails for me is, first, it follows the bog-standard romance blueprint with the inevitable breakup, this time at the 2/3rds point. All that would have needed to prevent this, is an honest conversation. Who's fooling who here? We know they'll get back together and live happily every after. But then there is the second half of the story where our plucky hero steps up to help save the bakery from mean developers. And we know how that is going to end as well.
In short, a cozy, sugar-sweet romance if you like that sort of thing.
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