Category: Cozy

Ever have the feeling that you’ve read something recently, forgot to write down anything about it, and can’t remember what the book was?  Me, with this book.  I only read it 10 days ago and completely forgot everything about it, including its title.

BUT, once I chased it down, it all came flooding back, so let’s place the blame on a synaptic failure, rather than the story.  Because the story is memorable, although perhaps not for the right reasons.

It’s not a bad story – it is, in fact, a really good one, with an interesting blend of amateur detective and police procedural.  I liked the psychic element too, especially since the MC is the first person to stand up and say ‘Yes! I have visions, but they’re often meaningless and almost always unreliable.’

Where it floundered for me was the characterisations.  The police detective (my inability to remember names is an across-the-board life failure), is solid, well thought out, real.  I liked him.  The rest … are a work in progress.  I hope.  Especially the MC, whose maturity level I’d put somewhere just above toddler and a bit below pre-teen.  Ok, that’s harsh.  She’s solidly in the pre-teen/adolescent range.  No sense of responsibility, no sense of self, very reactionary, and overly prone to just default to her neighborhood bar and drink to excess.  Totally floundering.  I’m not sure her BFF is any better, or maybe she just had less time on the page.

There is hope though; she takes the investigation seriously and the author effectively communicates the MC’s desire to grow up and let go of the tragedy that compelled her to agree to helping the detective in the first place.

So, while I’m making this sound terrible, it’s really not, and I definitely want to read the second book.  If the MC is still immature by the end of that one, I’ll bow out of the series, but it has a lot going for it, and I’m willing to allow for ongoing character growth.

I have enjoyed Gigi Pandian’s work ever since I first picked up a Jaya Jones mystery, but it’s always been a hard-won enjoyment.  There’s just something about her writing that I can’t quite put my finger on, whether it’s characterisations, or tone, I don’t know.  Usually, by the mid-way point I’m over it and enjoying the story.   This one was more of a struggle from beginning to end.

Some stream of consciousness thoughts:  I love the premise of secret passageways, hidden rooms … who doesn’t?  I’m not so much a fan of the stage magician stuff.  I love magic and illusions, just not the usually seedy backstage stuff.  I found the ‘curse’ in the Raj family a non-starter; I just didn’t buy into it from the start and the drama Pandian tried to build out of it just continued to fall flat.  I like the cross-over of characters that takes place between this series and Jaya Jones and I liked most of the new characters too.  The ‘tension’ between the two BFF’s also felt manufactured.  Basically, whenever Pandian tried to drum up drama in the story, it backfired (for me).  I thoroughly enjoyed the veiled references to gargoyle’s (Adrian!), and the introduction of an escape-artist bunny called Abra was a nice change of pace as a series mascot.

The plot was very well done, if maybe a tad … I don’t know; I just know when the denouement came I felt nothing.  Not surprise, not annoyance, not disbelief.  Just … nothing.  But it was well crafted, and I had no hint of where things were going.  Her use of a magician’s misdirection in the plot was a tad heavy handed, but really only in retrospect.

Overall, it’s not a bad mystery, even though I’m making it sound like it might be.  This is, I think, Pandian’s first mainstream, big-publisher book, and perhaps I feel like she tried a tad too hard, but in spite of that, I will gladly read the second book in the series.

 

I saw this in my local bookshop last week and almost fell over in shock – I’ve never seen a cozy – especially not a mass market cozy – for sale in an Australian bookstore before.  It sounded promising, and I want to encourage bookstores here to embrace a wider variety of sub genres, so I picked it up.

It wasn’t bad – I’ll happily read the second one – but it wasn’t without its problems.  The MC thinks she’s going to be more capable of solving the crime than the local sheriff, which is always a turn off for me.  I dislike arrogance in my amateur detectives unless their names are Sherlock Holmes.  But on the plus side, she’s humbled a time or two and she’s graceful about it.  The dynamic between her and her ex-husband was a bit cliche, as was the tension between herself and the sheriff.

The plotting was ambitious; Berry made it work, but it was just this side of a stretch even for cozy mysteries.

There is a second one out now and I’ll happily give it a try to see if the kinks in characterisation is worked out, but it definitely has potential.

This is one of those series best read for the atmosphere, the setting, and the characters, rather than for the mystery.  The mysteries are good and well plotted, but slow paced; not quite back-burnered, but not front and center either.  As the latest entry, this one may be the most leisurely one yet, with plotting that, to me, relies on a far-fetched hunch on the part of the police commissionaire.  It works, for reasons that are logical in the end, but that first assumption – the bit that causes the cascade towards denouement, felt like too big a stretch.  Verlaque, the titular MC, is a bit of a damp twit in this book, which feels contrary to all previous books, and is an obvious sop to the conceit that (impending) parenthood softens even the most hardened heart.

Otherwise, the book was as enjoyable to read as all the rest – a nice mini-break to France from the comfort of my couch.  Now that Verlaque and Marine have reproduced, my anticipation of future books is somewhat dampened, as I don’t think parenting and solving crimes a sensible mix, but I will happily read the next one and hope to be proved wrong.

Apparently the BBC has made a TV show of this series, called Murder in Provence, available on BritBox.  I watched the trailer the other day and … everyone is British.  I mean, I realise the BBC is a British production company, but the setting is in France, and all the characters are French, at least they are in the books.  Listening to Verlaque and Marine speak in very British accents was unnerving.  But the show did appear to be humorous, and I admit to being intrigued – possibly enough to sign up for the free month trial.

This arrived just as I was finishing my last Halloween Bingo read, and it felt like just the thing to start next.  I’ve read most of Ryan’s previous work, and I’m a huge fan of her Mattie Winston series, but I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one.  It’s fun, and it has a lot to like, but it might be a case of too much of a good thing.

First the device I didn’t care for at all:  Morgan, the MC, has a tragic past – seriously brutal.  It isn’t the tragedy or the retelling of it that I didn’t care for, but the lack of resolution.  It’s clear that this is going to be a background ‘thing’ that lurks in future books in the series.  I’m sort of over multi-book story arcs and this one, because of its nature, interests me even less than most.

Morgan as a character, though, is kind of refreshing.  She’s very pragmatic, so there’s no cutesy giddiness that has invaded cozies in the last decade.  She runs a mystery bookshop, but it’s also a shop that sells macabre and weird items, which I love, but there were a few times it felt like the author was trying to make the reader uncomfortable.  As if she’s single handedly trying to over-correct the current course of the cozy sub-genre.  This is a tactic I appreciate, but might have been done a bit more subtly.

She is also a cryptozoology consultant, and she comes at it from the perspective of a sceptic: think Mulder’s desire to believe and Scully’s need for scientific explanation rolled into one personality.  She has degrees in biology and zoology and really is a highly rational MC.  I liked her, but I feel like Ryan’s still trying to find her footing with her.  Ryan has an easier time of it with the supporting cast, who are all quirky, but also instantly likeable.  Newt the dog was awesome.  Seriously, I think he’s every animal lover’s dream dog, and Morgan every dog’s dream owner.

The plot was … interesting but not well constructed.  There wasn’t a shred of doubt in my mind what they were ultimately looking for – it was obvious from their very first boat trip.  There were moments where the author stumbled a bit, trying to meld a cryptozoological investigation with investigations into the deaths of the victims; ungraceful moments when it was clear the MC was overstepping but the story couldn’t really move forward if she didn’t.  Still, there were a few unique bits and pieces along the way, and the solution was satisfying.  I’ll definitely and happily read the next book and look forward to a fun new series (fingers crossed).