A review by mazza57
The Smart Woman's Guide to Murder by Victoria Dowd

2.0

It took me sometime to get into this book. The characters are all mad, bad and dangerous to know but far from engaging for me as the reader. There was too much made of how much everyone "disliked" Ursula and, indeed, how much she herself set out to be disliked. The narrative got a bit lost in the constant "blacking out" of Ursula. Whilst it is far from comparable quality the mystery reminded me of [b:The Mousetrap |121655|The Mousetrap and Other Plays|Agatha Christie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1255774464l/121655._SX50_.jpg|747005] or another of Christie's books [b:And Then There Were None|16299|And Then There Were None|Agatha Christie|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1391120695l/16299._SY75_.jpg|3038872]. I have read other reviews of this book which suggest it is laugh out loud I completely missed this humour if indeed it was there. For me whilst it was not a dreadful read it failed to really create any continuity in its narrative line. I did quite like the labelling of the chapters as a sort of Murder 101 / guide on what not to do. Unfortunately the author has in some ways ignored her own advice. I am willing to give the author another try in the future so its not all bad