Skip to main content

Mystery author #33: Laura Childs

Title: Shades of Earl Grey
Series detective: Theodosia ‘Theo’ Browning
No. in series: 3
Year of publication: 2003
Type of mystery: Theft, possible manslaughter
Type of investigator: Amateur
Setting & time: Charleston, SC, USA; modern timeless

Story: When a number of valuable antiques are stolen and a young groom is tragically killed in a possibly theft-related incident, Theodosia seems to be the only one who thinks there might be a cat burglar specialising in antiques at work in Charleston. Some speculation and a little investigation reveals three possible suspects, and she and her sidekick, Drayton, plan a trap to capture the thief.

SPOILER WARNING:


Review: I love cozy mysteries and I had expectations of this book, but unfortunately it fell a long way from those expectations. It’s cozy all right, but the plotting is weak and the sleuthing consists mostly of conjecture and asking a friendly police officer some questions. Additionally, the sleuth commits what to me amounts to a crime: in a fit of TSTL she does something so incredibly stupid and dangerous that one can only assume her common sense has been surgically removed. I don’t care if the criminal was “only” a thief, she had no way of knowing that, and while she sensibly brought her attack-trained dog along, it was still stupid. I know we are supposed to suspend our disbelief when reading fiction, but in the face of something like this mine refuses to let itself be suspended.

The characters have little depth – as a matter of fact the author’s idea of describing a character’s personality seems to consist of describing that they are wearing. It gets repetitive after the second time for each character, as does the endless, pointless tea drinking. I know it’s supposed to create a cosy atmosphere, but one detailed description of tea drinking is enough, whereas there is one in almost every third chapter. (And I happen to be a tea drinker myself).

However, according to some reviews I found on the web, this book does not live up to the standard set by the previous two books in the series, so I am going to give Childs a second chance, but should I discover her sleuth being TSTL again, she will be going on my Do Not Read list.

As usual, there will be no author review until I have read a second book.

Rating: A cosy mystery that is more cosy than it is mysterious, with a clueless sleuth to boot. 2 stars.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...
9 comments
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more