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mattdube 's review for:
In Big Trouble
by Laura Lippman
I thought this was a pretty decent little mystery. I liked the way that parts of this book function almost as travel writing, and I liked the geography Lippman chooses to write about here; I feel warmly toward Austin and San Antonio, and liked what she wrote about.
I was kind of into, and kind of bored by, some of the relationship stuff-- this might be because the best of the Crow-Tess stuff was set up elsewhere, but I kind of doubt it? The other stuff, her early interactions with her women friends, had promise but didn't come back in this particular book.
Both of those elements, though, are side dishes to a main course I didn't really think so much of-- the elements I wanted to read more about: the struggling musicians, the underground scene, seemed to lose out to the old unsolved mystery element, which maybe just wasn't as present as it needed to be to make me care about it. So in the end, I didn't get enough of what I wanted; the ultimate mastermind felt kind of beside the point, acting for reasons the book hadn't quite prepared me for, and bringing together a climax that didn't flatter the most compelling parts of the characters we'd spent time with.
This stuff is hard, duh. But I felt like this was a bit of a misfire, a book that had some strong elements that it never fully exploited. I liked it enough to wish it was better.
I was kind of into, and kind of bored by, some of the relationship stuff-- this might be because the best of the Crow-Tess stuff was set up elsewhere, but I kind of doubt it? The other stuff, her early interactions with her women friends, had promise but didn't come back in this particular book.
Both of those elements, though, are side dishes to a main course I didn't really think so much of-- the elements I wanted to read more about: the struggling musicians, the underground scene, seemed to lose out to the old unsolved mystery element, which maybe just wasn't as present as it needed to be to make me care about it. So in the end, I didn't get enough of what I wanted; the ultimate mastermind felt kind of beside the point, acting for reasons the book hadn't quite prepared me for, and bringing together a climax that didn't flatter the most compelling parts of the characters we'd spent time with.
This stuff is hard, duh. But I felt like this was a bit of a misfire, a book that had some strong elements that it never fully exploited. I liked it enough to wish it was better.