by Alison Bruce
rating:☆☆
published: 1st January 2009
spoilers? no
Goodreads
You lose a child and you do understand each other's grief at first, but if you get out of step with each other, it's all over. Suddenly each of you is alone.
To be honest, I only picked this book up because it was a murder mystery set in Cambridge. That was it. Waterstones had it on a table of books set in Cambridge (along with The Grantchester Mysteries which I love the TV show of) and so I figured I'd trust Waterstones and read this.
Not my best idea, I gotta admit.
I should probably have guessed as such. I already know that I'm seriously easily annoyed when it comes to authors who haven't got the simple fact of a language correct, so when it's a town I know and they haven't got it right? Uh oh.
Which was the case here. I don't get it at all though, because apparently Alison Bruce lives in Cambridge, but the Cambridge she describes is not the one I know. For example: there is no "Rolfe Street" in Cambridge, nor a railway bridge that has railings you can look out over if you're heading out of town (and given where he was headed I assume it was Hills Road Bridge he was referring to which definitely doesn't have railings). Bradwell's Court hasn't existed since 2006 and this book was published in 2008. It's Christ's Pieces, not Christ's Piece. The flats on the Fen Causeway are not white and fancy. (Sorry I got carried away.) I know all these things might seem picky but they actually affect how easy I find it is to read the book. I kept stopping while reading it because the descriptions didn't make sense and I couldn't just let them go by.
That wasn't the only problem I had with this book though. The writing wasn't amazing and seemed kind of clunky in places. Also, did it even have a proofreader? I picked up "exelsior", "futher", "definately", and "thougthfully". "Exelsior" even appeared twice in the same page.
Neither did the mystery grab me all that much. The murderer was pretty obvious (especially when right at the beginning there's this comment about the guy being possessive. Like, if that's going to be the case, at least try make it a little less blindingly obvious maybe?) although the conclusion seemed pretty convoluted and I lost track of what was actually going on (something about a little brother being killed, and a girlfriend, and there was some incest thrown in there for good measure?).
I did like Gary though. Even if there was a little of the Brilliant Detective Syndrome going on. And also that weird stalkerish behaviour with the receptionist I can't remember the name of. Even if he did admit to knowing it was stalkerish and deciding to stop, I'm still leery about it.
Anyway, I'm going to go foist this book on my mum so we can have Deep Discussions over the incorrectness of the Cambridge descriptions.
0 comments:
Post a Comment