Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

by Carol4 Comments
I should have loved Magpie Murders. It's definitely a book for mystery readers. Not only does it have two well-plotted mysteries, it has some great quotes about the nature of mysteries and reading. “You must know that feeling when it's raining outside and the heating's on and you lose yourself, utterly, in a book. You read and you read and you feel the pages slipping through your fingers until suddenly there are fewer in your right hand than there are in your left and you want to slow down but you still hurtle on towards a conclusion you can hardly bear to discover.” “As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists & turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.” The set up is great, a novel within a novel, both murder...
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Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris

by Carol3 Comments
Phoenix Rising was fun, but not quite good enough to hold my attention the whole time - like I found myself at the gym watching the captions on HGTV instead of listening to the story. I think it's a problem with the attitude of the book. It's steampunk. Books is an archivist; Braun is kind of a female James Bond. They embark on solving a mystery that drove one of their colleagues literally insane. There are huge mechamen and an enemy intent on destroying England maybe - not sure. There's an orgy and an escape from the dungeon. It's absurd and would be amusing, if it felt like the story knew how silly it was, instead it seems to take itself seriously. Now, I listened to the audio, so I don't know if that's just the way the narration seemed and I would have found the whole think more tongue in cheek had I been reading it in print. I like...
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Natchez Burning by Greg Iles

by Carol3 Comments
I really expected to like Natchez Burning. I've read Iles' books before and found the gripping and thought-provoking. This one just didn't work for me. The plot itself is good, I liked, or hated, the characters, and the setting was well-done. I enjoyed seeing the story from different characters points of view and it was easy to follow whose side of the story we were hearing. I did listen to the whole 35+ hours, but in the end I wished I hadn't bothered. First, there is a lot of repetition. Cut some of it out and it would be a tighter, more enjoyable book. I hate it when authors seem to think I'm going to forget things two chapters after they told me the first time. Second, it was overwrought. I don't know whether to blame the writing or the reader, but it was all overdone, just too much. Maybe the goal was to maintain tension and be descriptive, but it came...
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The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah

by Carol8 Comments
I have been a Poirot fan for as long as I can remember, so of course I had to pick up The Monogram Murders. I have to admit I was disappointed. As a mystery, it was okay, if you can overlook the horrible  Scotland Yard detective Poirot has paired himself with, Catchpool. He's incompetent and spends way too much time dwelling on events in his childhood, on his weaknesses. The mystery, the way the murders are committed and how the bodies are laid out is interesting enough. There's even a nice little bit that confuses the time of death and the clues fit together well. The mystery itself could have been good, but it relied on the Poirot hook and in that it failed. Maybe give me an original character, or even a better sidekick and I would have felt differently. Poirot is just not Poirot. He's too Poirot, if that makes sense. It's like he's overly conscious of his own mannerisms and...
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