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3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
The main character is bland and boring. She often wastes time by spending half a page thinking about, for example, what a waste of money first class is. Despite being the selling point in this series she also did almost none of the mystery solving. That's good for the reader though, giving us time with the investigator who has more personality.
As others have noted there's a lot of POV hoping, which I thought was done rather well. Some words are overused. Most annoyingly some things are kept a mystery for too long without particularly adding to the tension or suspense.
In the end I won't read another book in this series, but would consider another mystery by the author, if I enjoy the main character.
I'd seen enough good reviews of this to check it out in hardback since it had a very interesting premise. It's set in the 1930s and features the crime novelist Josephine Tey as a character. I devoured all Tey's books (there are only about six) as a teenager and have been meaning to reread them for years now.
I was aware before I started that there were elements of truth in the storyline but that it was mostly fiction - Josephine Tey was a pseudonym so Upson has had the freedom to create a real historical character who didn't really exist. This book does revolve around a real play of Tey's though Richard of Bordeaux which was written under another pen name: Gordon Daviot. It's not as complicated as I'm making it sound! I felt that the author pulled off the blend of fact and fiction pretty well and I'm pleased to find out that people who know more about it that I do think so too.
Anyway, there is a reasonable crime novel here as well as a nice period piece. This book does rather revolve around bringing Tey to life but there is promise of a series and I'll certainly be checking out the next one.
