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A review by melbsreads
A Scandal in Bohemia: The Life and Death of Mollie Dean by Gideon Haigh
2.5
Trigger warnings: murder, rape, death of a child, cheating, abusive/controlling parent.
This book sounded absolutely fascinating and I was really hoping to be hooked from start to finish. Unfortunately, this was incredibly dry and I spent most of the time glaring at the criminology call number on the spine, because this is less true crime and more a history of the bohemian arts scene in Melbourne in 1930 and how the murder of one of their own changed the group dynamic.
I felt like maybe two or three chapters of this were actually dealing with the crime and the rest was just about the group of artists and writers that Mollie hung out with. All those artists were talked about as though the reader should know who they were - I didn't - and as though the reader should care about them in some way - I also didn't. I cared about Mollie, but we got so little of her that mostly I was bored. So very very bored. The writing was dry as a piece of bread left outside on a 47 degree day, and seeing as I couldn't give a flying fuck about the arts scene in Melbourne in 1930, this mostly left me flat.
This book sounded absolutely fascinating and I was really hoping to be hooked from start to finish. Unfortunately, this was incredibly dry and I spent most of the time glaring at the criminology call number on the spine, because this is less true crime and more a history of the bohemian arts scene in Melbourne in 1930 and how the murder of one of their own changed the group dynamic.
I felt like maybe two or three chapters of this were actually dealing with the crime and the rest was just about the group of artists and writers that Mollie hung out with. All those artists were talked about as though the reader should know who they were - I didn't - and as though the reader should care about them in some way - I also didn't. I cared about Mollie, but we got so little of her that mostly I was bored. So very very bored. The writing was dry as a piece of bread left outside on a 47 degree day, and seeing as I couldn't give a flying fuck about the arts scene in Melbourne in 1930, this mostly left me flat.