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3.46 AVERAGE
3.46 AVERAGE
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
‘Except the Dying’ by Maureen Jennings is book one in the Murdoch Mystery series, published in 1997. There are only eight books in this series, which is massively shocking and unexpected for me! I have been binging the TV show ‘The Murdoch Mysteries’, a Canadian television show which will begin its 17th season in 2024. I have the Hoopla app, which suggested the show to me since I mostly check out and watch video mysteries on the app, which is connected to my library card. I recently discovered the show is on Hulu, too.
I copied the book blurb:
”In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the unclad body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. Detective William Murdoch quickly finds out that more than one person connected with the girl’s simple life has something to hide.”
The novel is a good one, an interesting historical novel as well as a traditional mystery. It drew me on, had me wanting to know how it would end. It has a lot of factual tidbits included about Toronto, Canada, and how people lived in 1895. I would not have wanted to be a woman in the late 19th century, but life was difficult for many people, not just women. The book does not hide from the ugly world of poverty. Murdoch would not have solved the mystery without the help of young abandoned boys who live on the streets, literally sleeping on sidewalks, or prostitutes who observe the men and carriages going by them. The pain of poverty (as well as the boredom felt by upper-class young men) was dulled by quite a bit of alcohol, drugs and laudanum, used by many characters in the book. While the novel is realistic, though, it is not graphic. There are some things in the plot which were not clear, or explained adequately, but I thought this a minor quibble. It IS a number one in a series, and perhaps the author is still finding her way in this novel.
Despite that the TV Murdoch mysteries are edgy cozies, normally a type of genre of which I am not a huge fan, I have fallen in love with this television show. The TV actors starring in the show, all of them, are charming, winsome or interesting. They all play off of each other in such a way that there is as much amusement as well as drama in watching the characters interact in their private lives.
The TV Detective William Murdoch is a genius and an inventor, an amateur scientist, who uses his scientist brain to solve crimes. Series one began airing on television in 2007. The plots involve Murdoch meeting all kinds of important inventors and writers of history who actually were alive in 1895, 1896, 1897, etc. as each season is aired. It is a fun show! Although it is more cozy than hardcore, the show tackles difficult subjects like child abuse, poverty, class prejudices, and abortion. Murdoch, in season one, is a fundamentalist Catholic. However as the show progresses from season to season, he finds he must accept and change his mind about many of things the Catholic Church considers terrible sins.
However, the TV plots are not realistic in many ways: Murdoch invents many clever things on the show which are exactly like stuff that is attributed to others throughout real-life history, like the polygraph. Murdoch ‘invents’ such a lie-detector device to use in the Toronto police station in 1900 where he works. The history books tell us it was actually invented in 1921 in Berkeley, California at the University of California by John Augustus Larson, who was also a detective on a police force.
Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It is really a good TV show, with really good actors. Murdoch is played by the actor Yannick Bisson as a very proper upstanding high-class educated officer who doesn’t have any vices whatsoever. The character Constable Crabtree, played by Jonny Harris is very funny. He believes in the more exotic pseudo-theories of science believed by crackpots, and fringe scientists, like ghosts and space aliens. Some of the things, of course, that he says, which sound like wild speculation to the others, especially the purist science guy Murdoch, actually have come to pass, like spaceships going to the moon. Thomas Craig plays Inspector Thomas Brackenreid, a Protestant lower-class Irishman, as Murdoch’s boss. Brackenreid distinctly doesn’t like Murdoch at first, and does not understand science at all. But Murdoch proves over and over science works, so Brackenreid is won over. There are other characters, all of which are distinct and entertaining to watch.
The books are completely different! Completely! I was not only shocked by how few Murdoch mystery books were written, but I was also amazed by the TV transformation of the actual characters in the novels! The TV show sparkles with tongue-in-cheek entertainment, but the book is more like any usual mystery novel, similar in style, I think, to Agatha Christie and other mystery writers of the 1930’s, almost a procedural as well as a historical novel.
In the novel, Murdoch is not a genius scientist/gentleman who is working as a detective. He is more lower-class in the novel than he is on TV, someone who couldn’t attend college because his father was an abusive drunk and his mother died supposedly by drowning in a shallow pool on a beach collecting mussels. Murdoch believes his father killed his mother in the book. He has a brother and sister, the sister having joined a nunnery at a very early age, driven to this action by their horrible homelife. In the book, Murdoch has worked at many jobs before becoming a police officer, such as a chopper at a lumber mill in Nova Scotia. He rents a room from an elderly couple in the novel. If I remember correctly, in the TV show he lives in a hotel room he rents, and not much has been seen of any family, or has any backstory been told. So far I am up to the sixth season. Viewers have met Murdoch’s sister, who is a nun on the TV show as she is in the book.
The only thing that is the same about TV Murdoch as in the book is Murdock is a Catholic. But the TV version of Murdoch is more of a fundamentalist Catholic than the novel Murdoch.
All of the other characters in the novel have been changed a lot. Crabtree, in the novel, is over 6 feet tall and hugely husky. In the TV show, Crabtree is played by a slight, 5-foot 7- or 8-inch actor, who has excellent comedic timing when saying his lines. Brackenreid bullies Murdoch, having not much respect for him in the novel, while he covers for and backs up Murdoch on TV. The medical examiner on TV is a lovely, super-educated woman, who becomes Murdoch’s love interest. In the book, there are no professional upper-class women. The only women in the book are prostitutes and wives, or lower-class store clerks or servants.
I liked the book, but I do prefer the TV show. One of those rare instances of the book being not as good! But it is a perfect novel for the beach, gentler reader!
I copied the book blurb:
”In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the unclad body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. Detective William Murdoch quickly finds out that more than one person connected with the girl’s simple life has something to hide.”
The novel is a good one, an interesting historical novel as well as a traditional mystery. It drew me on, had me wanting to know how it would end. It has a lot of factual tidbits included about Toronto, Canada, and how people lived in 1895. I would not have wanted to be a woman in the late 19th century, but life was difficult for many people, not just women. The book does not hide from the ugly world of poverty. Murdoch would not have solved the mystery without the help of young abandoned boys who live on the streets, literally sleeping on sidewalks, or prostitutes who observe the men and carriages going by them. The pain of poverty (as well as the boredom felt by upper-class young men) was dulled by quite a bit of alcohol, drugs and laudanum, used by many characters in the book. While the novel is realistic, though, it is not graphic. There are some things in the plot which were not clear, or explained adequately, but I thought this a minor quibble. It IS a number one in a series, and perhaps the author is still finding her way in this novel.
Despite that the TV Murdoch mysteries are edgy cozies, normally a type of genre of which I am not a huge fan, I have fallen in love with this television show. The TV actors starring in the show, all of them, are charming, winsome or interesting. They all play off of each other in such a way that there is as much amusement as well as drama in watching the characters interact in their private lives.
The TV Detective William Murdoch is a genius and an inventor, an amateur scientist, who uses his scientist brain to solve crimes. Series one began airing on television in 2007. The plots involve Murdoch meeting all kinds of important inventors and writers of history who actually were alive in 1895, 1896, 1897, etc. as each season is aired. It is a fun show! Although it is more cozy than hardcore, the show tackles difficult subjects like child abuse, poverty, class prejudices, and abortion. Murdoch, in season one, is a fundamentalist Catholic. However as the show progresses from season to season, he finds he must accept and change his mind about many of things the Catholic Church considers terrible sins.
However, the TV plots are not realistic in many ways: Murdoch invents many clever things on the show which are exactly like stuff that is attributed to others throughout real-life history, like the polygraph. Murdoch ‘invents’ such a lie-detector device to use in the Toronto police station in 1900 where he works. The history books tell us it was actually invented in 1921 in Berkeley, California at the University of California by John Augustus Larson, who was also a detective on a police force.
Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It is really a good TV show, with really good actors. Murdoch is played by the actor Yannick Bisson as a very proper upstanding high-class educated officer who doesn’t have any vices whatsoever. The character Constable Crabtree, played by Jonny Harris is very funny. He believes in the more exotic pseudo-theories of science believed by crackpots, and fringe scientists, like ghosts and space aliens. Some of the things, of course, that he says, which sound like wild speculation to the others, especially the purist science guy Murdoch, actually have come to pass, like spaceships going to the moon. Thomas Craig plays Inspector Thomas Brackenreid, a Protestant lower-class Irishman, as Murdoch’s boss. Brackenreid distinctly doesn’t like Murdoch at first, and does not understand science at all. But Murdoch proves over and over science works, so Brackenreid is won over. There are other characters, all of which are distinct and entertaining to watch.
The books are completely different! Completely! I was not only shocked by how few Murdoch mystery books were written, but I was also amazed by the TV transformation of the actual characters in the novels! The TV show sparkles with tongue-in-cheek entertainment, but the book is more like any usual mystery novel, similar in style, I think, to Agatha Christie and other mystery writers of the 1930’s, almost a procedural as well as a historical novel.
In the novel, Murdoch is not a genius scientist/gentleman who is working as a detective. He is more lower-class in the novel than he is on TV, someone who couldn’t attend college because his father was an abusive drunk and his mother died supposedly by drowning in a shallow pool on a beach collecting mussels. Murdoch believes his father killed his mother in the book. He has a brother and sister, the sister having joined a nunnery at a very early age, driven to this action by their horrible homelife. In the book, Murdoch has worked at many jobs before becoming a police officer, such as a chopper at a lumber mill in Nova Scotia. He rents a room from an elderly couple in the novel. If I remember correctly, in the TV show he lives in a hotel room he rents, and not much has been seen of any family, or has any backstory been told. So far I am up to the sixth season. Viewers have met Murdoch’s sister, who is a nun on the TV show as she is in the book.
The only thing that is the same about TV Murdoch as in the book is Murdock is a Catholic. But the TV version of Murdoch is more of a fundamentalist Catholic than the novel Murdoch.
All of the other characters in the novel have been changed a lot. Crabtree, in the novel, is over 6 feet tall and hugely husky. In the TV show, Crabtree is played by a slight, 5-foot 7- or 8-inch actor, who has excellent comedic timing when saying his lines. Brackenreid bullies Murdoch, having not much respect for him in the novel, while he covers for and backs up Murdoch on TV. The medical examiner on TV is a lovely, super-educated woman, who becomes Murdoch’s love interest. In the book, there are no professional upper-class women. The only women in the book are prostitutes and wives, or lower-class store clerks or servants.
I liked the book, but I do prefer the TV show. One of those rare instances of the book being not as good! But it is a perfect novel for the beach, gentler reader!
Much more a traditional historical mystery than I'd expected, based on the television series. Good stuff.
I did not realize that this was a book series until fairly recently. I would catch the odd episode of Murdoch Mysteries on CityTV and really enjoyed the show and the character - particularly since the mysteries are primarily set in Toronto (granted, it's the Toronto of 1895 but the location and familiar street references still make it more interesting for me). One day I happened to notice in the credits that the show was based on a series of books by Maureen Jennings. I immediately added them to my "To Read" shelf in Goodreads.
This is a good story filled with interesting characters and an intriguing mystery. I'm looking forward to reading the second book in the series.
This is a good story filled with interesting characters and an intriguing mystery. I'm looking forward to reading the second book in the series.
nothing like the show....very intense, rather lewd, and more sexual inuendos than expected. interesting story though
I adore the television series Murdoch Mysteries and when I discovered they were based on a book series I knew I had to get hold of one to read. I can honestly say I am glad I did not spend much on this book.
While the story managed to hold my interest, I cannot say it was because it the writing was particularly good. Brevity is not a word I would use to describe Ms. Jennings' writing style. I often felt the book was meandering and would circle round and round without ever quite reaching the point. What kept me reading was a desire to know the outcome and the fact that I hate leaving books unfinished. Truly, reading this book became more of a chore than a pleasure.
I didn't mind the mislead on the murderer, but I also didn't feel that she established cause for the murderer to commit the murder. The story felt incomplete in some ways while being far too complete in others. I am unlikely to read any additional Murdoch books and will, instead, continue to enjoy the television show.
While the story managed to hold my interest, I cannot say it was because it the writing was particularly good. Brevity is not a word I would use to describe Ms. Jennings' writing style. I often felt the book was meandering and would circle round and round without ever quite reaching the point. What kept me reading was a desire to know the outcome and the fact that I hate leaving books unfinished. Truly, reading this book became more of a chore than a pleasure.
I didn't mind the mislead on the murderer, but I also didn't feel that she established cause for the murderer to commit the murder. The story felt incomplete in some ways while being far too complete in others. I am unlikely to read any additional Murdoch books and will, instead, continue to enjoy the television show.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I really wanted to love this book. I have loved Detective Murdoch since I started watching Murdoch Mysteries several years ago (around 2010?). I may be a bit biased because I have been a big fan of Yannick Bisson since 2002 when I started to watch Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye. Anyway, I love the television show: the characters, the setting, the forensic science used.
I expected to have a similar experience with this book.
That was not the case. The characters are quite different. Murdoch is more gruff than in the tv series. I was quite surprised to see him curse at one point. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing, but it was just not what I was expecting from Murdoch. Crabtree is physically very different from Jonny Harris. Again, that's not a bad thing, just...different. I believe that in the book he is also married with a whole lot of kids at home? I don't have the book with me any more, so I can't go back and check. Brackenreid was very different, hardly ever seen, but referenced as a much less likable person.
I think those were the majority of my "problems" with this book. They weren't truly problems, but my own preconceptions of what I thought I would get. So I was kind of disappointed as I made my way through this novel.
Once I was able to push those aside, I was able to enjoy the book for what it was and not what I expected it to be.
I don't know why, but it took me a really long time to read this book. That's unusual for me, especially for a book of this length. I usually read at night before bed, but I guess I didn't read as much at night during April. Anyway, that might have contributed to my "difficulty" with this book.
I thought Jennings did a really nice job of using the language of the time (1895), but I did find it a little confusing at times. I like reading Victorian era stories, but I admit I was not familiar with all the terms and slang used in this book. But I really did feel like she captured the essence of that era. Not only the language used by the characters, but also the social conventions and overall culture.
I did have some trouble with the motive behind the crime in this book. I never really did understand why the murder was committed.
Overall, I enjoyed the book decently enough. I plan on reading the next two that my local library has. I hope that I can get my hands on the later books in the series if I like the next two as well.
I expected to have a similar experience with this book.
That was not the case. The characters are quite different. Murdoch is more gruff than in the tv series. I was quite surprised to see him curse at one point. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing, but it was just not what I was expecting from Murdoch. Crabtree is physically very different from Jonny Harris. Again, that's not a bad thing, just...different. I believe that in the book he is also married with a whole lot of kids at home? I don't have the book with me any more, so I can't go back and check. Brackenreid was very different, hardly ever seen, but referenced as a much less likable person.
I think those were the majority of my "problems" with this book. They weren't truly problems, but my own preconceptions of what I thought I would get. So I was kind of disappointed as I made my way through this novel.
Once I was able to push those aside, I was able to enjoy the book for what it was and not what I expected it to be.
I don't know why, but it took me a really long time to read this book. That's unusual for me, especially for a book of this length. I usually read at night before bed, but I guess I didn't read as much at night during April. Anyway, that might have contributed to my "difficulty" with this book.
I thought Jennings did a really nice job of using the language of the time (1895), but I did find it a little confusing at times. I like reading Victorian era stories, but I admit I was not familiar with all the terms and slang used in this book. But I really did feel like she captured the essence of that era. Not only the language used by the characters, but also the social conventions and overall culture.
I did have some trouble with the motive behind the crime in this book. I never really did understand why the murder was committed.
Overall, I enjoyed the book decently enough. I plan on reading the next two that my local library has. I hope that I can get my hands on the later books in the series if I like the next two as well.
"Mädchen im Schnee" war ein guter hsitorischer Roman in einem ungewöhnlichen historischen Setting: Toronto, Kanada, am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts. Detailreich beschrieben und wirklich gut recherchiert, mit einer guten Story und einem Detektiv, der Lust auf mehr macht.
Sehr gut, ungewöhnlich und daher: 4 Sterne!
Sehr gut, ungewöhnlich und daher: 4 Sterne!