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tinabaich's review
2.0
Billingsgate Shoal is the first in Boyer's Doc Adams series. The book opens with Adams observing a strange boat stuck on Billingsgate Shoal. He later sees it coming into port and sends a scuba-diving family friend to check it out. The scuba diver later turns up dead in the water. Adams, thinking it is somehow tied to the boat, feel guilty. There begins his quest to find out the truth about the boat and, hopefully, to assuage his own guilt.
While the story of Billingsgate Shoal is a good one, I had a hard time believing in Doc Adams as a character. I mean how likely is it that a dental surgeon will stumble into a mystery of this size and complexity and make it through the other side. And then to go on to solve a series of mysteries? I just couldn’t get my head around it. It also just didn’t seem up to par with the other Edgar Award-winning novels I’ve read this year. Quite honestly, reading this book is partly to blame for my recent reading slump.
In reading Edgar Award-winning mysteries this year, I’ve found a few series that I would be happy to continue reading. Unfortunately, Boyer’s Doc Adams series doesn’t make this list. Of all the Edgar books I’ve reviewed, I am least likely to recommend it to others.
http://iubookgirl.blogspot.com/2011/08/review-billingsgate-shoal.html
While the story of Billingsgate Shoal is a good one, I had a hard time believing in Doc Adams as a character. I mean how likely is it that a dental surgeon will stumble into a mystery of this size and complexity and make it through the other side. And then to go on to solve a series of mysteries? I just couldn’t get my head around it. It also just didn’t seem up to par with the other Edgar Award-winning novels I’ve read this year. Quite honestly, reading this book is partly to blame for my recent reading slump.
In reading Edgar Award-winning mysteries this year, I’ve found a few series that I would be happy to continue reading. Unfortunately, Boyer’s Doc Adams series doesn’t make this list. Of all the Edgar books I’ve reviewed, I am least likely to recommend it to others.
http://iubookgirl.blogspot.com/2011/08/review-billingsgate-shoal.html
ncrabb's review
1.0
I think this author is talented and probably turns out great stuff; the fact that he won an Edgar for this book says others think so, too. So while it may be a great book for you, it wasn’t a really good fit for me.
Doc Adams is an oral surgeon and a keen observer of men and things. He has that sometimes-snarky personality that will draw you to him, because it’s not so obnoxious that you want to stop reading.
One day as he and a young friend are observing a boat that seems to be in trouble, Adams encourages his friend to dive to the boat to determine whether its crew needs help. The young man surfaces later dead of a head wound, and Doc Adams is pretty sure it’s his fault. Naturally, he sleuths for a solution to why the young man died, and he endangers his life in the process.
This almost felt like it was written for a New England-specific audience, even though that’s not true. It’s a tangle of Irish gun runners and eccentric old-moneyed widows (Ok, technically, there’s only one of those), but for whatever reason, I always felt as if I were observing Doc Adams’s world from some distant place rather than being pulled into the mystery. I suspect the problem is all mine. Clearly, this guy can write, and he writes well. I just didn’t feel the same connection to these characters as I do the late Phillip R. Craig’s Martha’s Vineyard mysteries featuring the always-excellent J. W. Jackson, his wife, and kids. I haven’t paid a call on J. W. in years, and this book, instead of connecting me to Doc Adams, made me wistful to reconnect to Jackson and his family. Since both this and the Jackson series are set in New England, it must be a difference in writing styles and characters that enable me to hope this book is a plus for you, even if it’s not for me.
Doc Adams is an oral surgeon and a keen observer of men and things. He has that sometimes-snarky personality that will draw you to him, because it’s not so obnoxious that you want to stop reading.
One day as he and a young friend are observing a boat that seems to be in trouble, Adams encourages his friend to dive to the boat to determine whether its crew needs help. The young man surfaces later dead of a head wound, and Doc Adams is pretty sure it’s his fault. Naturally, he sleuths for a solution to why the young man died, and he endangers his life in the process.
This almost felt like it was written for a New England-specific audience, even though that’s not true. It’s a tangle of Irish gun runners and eccentric old-moneyed widows (Ok, technically, there’s only one of those), but for whatever reason, I always felt as if I were observing Doc Adams’s world from some distant place rather than being pulled into the mystery. I suspect the problem is all mine. Clearly, this guy can write, and he writes well. I just didn’t feel the same connection to these characters as I do the late Phillip R. Craig’s Martha’s Vineyard mysteries featuring the always-excellent J. W. Jackson, his wife, and kids. I haven’t paid a call on J. W. in years, and this book, instead of connecting me to Doc Adams, made me wistful to reconnect to Jackson and his family. Since both this and the Jackson series are set in New England, it must be a difference in writing styles and characters that enable me to hope this book is a plus for you, even if it’s not for me.
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