Scan barcode
A review by oashackelford
The Agathas by Liz Lawson, Kathleen Glasgow
3.0
Last summer Alice Ogilvie pulled a full-on Agatha Christie. She made herself disappear for five days. Ever since then she has been the town pariah. But when her ex-best friend Brooke disappears from a party on Halloween night, she makes it her mission to get the town, and the police, to take the case seriously. They think that Brooke is just doing a disappearing act, so Alice does her best impression of Poirot to find out what happened to the girl she used to consider a friend.
Iris Adams wants nothing more than to leave this town. Something bad happened last summer and she wants out, but unfortunately for Iris, she's poor. So when Alice asks her to investigate Brooke's disappearance, it does not slip her attention that there is a sizable reward for the capture of Brooke's abductor. It might even be enough to leave this town behind for good.
I think that this book was trying really hard to be Agatha Christie, but it just didn't quite live up to that. I think that by invoking Christie it invited the comparison, but was not able to deliver. As a mystery it is still pretty good though. I think that the writer did a good job of lacing clues pretty seamlessly into the plot so that they were always there for the reader to discover, but not super obvious. Glasgow also did a good job of drawing the reader's attention to other suspects, which made the actual culprit more satisfying at the end.
As I said, I thought that this was a good read, but I did not find it gripping, or that it kept me on the edge of my seat at all. I do appreciate that there were no masked killers in the woods chasing after a group of teens, but I think the pacing could have been reworked a little better. I found that getting through the book was a slog at times, and I listened to the audio book, which usually makes the book feel like it is flowing better.
All told, I will probably check out the characters in the sequel as they were likable and I think that the case she has lined up next sounds pretty fascinating.
Iris Adams wants nothing more than to leave this town. Something bad happened last summer and she wants out, but unfortunately for Iris, she's poor. So when Alice asks her to investigate Brooke's disappearance, it does not slip her attention that there is a sizable reward for the capture of Brooke's abductor. It might even be enough to leave this town behind for good.
I think that this book was trying really hard to be Agatha Christie, but it just didn't quite live up to that. I think that by invoking Christie it invited the comparison, but was not able to deliver. As a mystery it is still pretty good though. I think that the writer did a good job of lacing clues pretty seamlessly into the plot so that they were always there for the reader to discover, but not super obvious. Glasgow also did a good job of drawing the reader's attention to other suspects, which made the actual culprit more satisfying at the end.
As I said, I thought that this was a good read, but I did not find it gripping, or that it kept me on the edge of my seat at all. I do appreciate that there were no masked killers in the woods chasing after a group of teens, but I think the pacing could have been reworked a little better. I found that getting through the book was a slog at times, and I listened to the audio book, which usually makes the book feel like it is flowing better.
All told, I will probably check out the characters in the sequel as they were likable and I think that the case she has lined up next sounds pretty fascinating.