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museoffire 's review for:
An Expert in Murder
by Nicola Upson
There is so much to unpack with this book I could be at it for a week and we'd still only be dealing with the underwear.
Does that analogy work? Like the underwear is something basic that you pack first like the cast of characters and there are so many of those that I could spend the whole review just talking about them leaving out the "pants" and "cocktail dresses" like those are the plot and the theme?
This is why I'm not a professional writer in case anyone was wondering.
This book is dense, very, very, verrrryyy dense. It's also very well written, down right beautiful at times, and once or twice utterly revolutory. That is when its not being a melodramatic soap opera populated with stereotypes and mustache twirling villains.
You see my conflict?
On the one hand we've got a totally cool concept. The really very talented Nicola Upson has taken the very real Josephine Tey, a mystery author and playwright, and turned her into the very kind of detective she once wrote about. With this particular book she's gotten even more meta by setting it in the midst of the run of "Richard of Bordeaux" the super successful very play Tey really did write in the 1930's. Tey meets a young fan of the play, which is about to close and go on tour, on the train, strikes up an immediate friendship and then the girl is promptly murdered in a weird, dramatic way.
Wackiness, as it always does, ensues.
Upson's descriptions of post World War I London are intense and dear god are they detailed. So detailed. The pages actually look jampacked. I don't know if that's the typeface or the layout but you can literally see how many words are jammed on the pages.
This is also possibly the most English book I have ever read in the history of books set in England. Everyone is just soooooooo English. They're all rich and theatery and "dahling" this and "do be a dear" that and someone is always putting the kettle on or serving kidney's and kippers and as people start being murdered left, right, and center the biggest concerns the victims loved ones are having is whether or not the police are being inconvenienced having to do all this wretched investigating.
Then we have the central mystery itself which isn't really revealed until you're a good three quarters of the way through the book and then it's not so much revealed as it is dropped directly onto the reader's head. I don't have a problem with that per say but its problematic here because instead of having anyone discover anything a character we've never met up till this point simply descends on everyone and exposits the entire thing to the detective investigating the crimes. Then the crime itself ends up being really, really dramatic to the point of absurdity. The only thing that keeps everything from going entirely off the rails is Upson's writing and the sincerity she imbues her characters with. They may be stereotypes but dammit they're sincere stereotypes.
There's another tiny thing that happens more than once that both boggled my mind and highly annoyed me. For some bizarre reason Upson would occasionally have conversations or investigative things happen "off stage." So a scene would start between two characters with one apologizing to the other for being so rude when they last spoke. Hang on, I'd think, when did they last speak? I don't remember an argument!? I'd spend several minutes trying to figure out if I'd skipped a scene or had amnesia only to eventually realize that for some bizarre reason Upson had skipped this argument and was instead just serving up the aftermath. It happened more than once and managed to both completely halt the story in its tracks while I tried to get my bearings again and served absolutely no technical purpose since the book is STILL way too long and involved.
I know all this sounds like I didn't like this book when the reality is I genuinely did. It was passionate and heartfelt and I loved Josephine's character. She's a strange, isolated, lonely woman trying to make her way in a world she doesn't recognize anymore. She's unsure if she even wants the fame that's come with her writing and doubtful that she will ever truly be able to connect with anyone after losing her lover in the war. She's deeply insightful, as writer's usually are, very brave, and unswerving in her loyalty to her friends. Its hard not to admire a character like that. I kept thinking she was someone I would have very much liked to know, that's how real she seemed.
I can forgive a lot of an author who can write a character like that.
Does that analogy work? Like the underwear is something basic that you pack first like the cast of characters and there are so many of those that I could spend the whole review just talking about them leaving out the "pants" and "cocktail dresses" like those are the plot and the theme?
This is why I'm not a professional writer in case anyone was wondering.
This book is dense, very, very, verrrryyy dense. It's also very well written, down right beautiful at times, and once or twice utterly revolutory. That is when its not being a melodramatic soap opera populated with stereotypes and mustache twirling villains.
You see my conflict?
On the one hand we've got a totally cool concept. The really very talented Nicola Upson has taken the very real Josephine Tey, a mystery author and playwright, and turned her into the very kind of detective she once wrote about. With this particular book she's gotten even more meta by setting it in the midst of the run of "Richard of Bordeaux" the super successful very play Tey really did write in the 1930's. Tey meets a young fan of the play, which is about to close and go on tour, on the train, strikes up an immediate friendship and then the girl is promptly murdered in a weird, dramatic way.
Wackiness, as it always does, ensues.
Upson's descriptions of post World War I London are intense and dear god are they detailed. So detailed. The pages actually look jampacked. I don't know if that's the typeface or the layout but you can literally see how many words are jammed on the pages.
This is also possibly the most English book I have ever read in the history of books set in England. Everyone is just soooooooo English. They're all rich and theatery and "dahling" this and "do be a dear" that and someone is always putting the kettle on or serving kidney's and kippers and as people start being murdered left, right, and center the biggest concerns the victims loved ones are having is whether or not the police are being inconvenienced having to do all this wretched investigating.
Then we have the central mystery itself which isn't really revealed until you're a good three quarters of the way through the book and then it's not so much revealed as it is dropped directly onto the reader's head. I don't have a problem with that per say but its problematic here because instead of having anyone discover anything a character we've never met up till this point simply descends on everyone and exposits the entire thing to the detective investigating the crimes. Then the crime itself ends up being really, really dramatic to the point of absurdity. The only thing that keeps everything from going entirely off the rails is Upson's writing and the sincerity she imbues her characters with. They may be stereotypes but dammit they're sincere stereotypes.
There's another tiny thing that happens more than once that both boggled my mind and highly annoyed me. For some bizarre reason Upson would occasionally have conversations or investigative things happen "off stage." So a scene would start between two characters with one apologizing to the other for being so rude when they last spoke. Hang on, I'd think, when did they last speak? I don't remember an argument!? I'd spend several minutes trying to figure out if I'd skipped a scene or had amnesia only to eventually realize that for some bizarre reason Upson had skipped this argument and was instead just serving up the aftermath. It happened more than once and managed to both completely halt the story in its tracks while I tried to get my bearings again and served absolutely no technical purpose since the book is STILL way too long and involved.
I know all this sounds like I didn't like this book when the reality is I genuinely did. It was passionate and heartfelt and I loved Josephine's character. She's a strange, isolated, lonely woman trying to make her way in a world she doesn't recognize anymore. She's unsure if she even wants the fame that's come with her writing and doubtful that she will ever truly be able to connect with anyone after losing her lover in the war. She's deeply insightful, as writer's usually are, very brave, and unswerving in her loyalty to her friends. Its hard not to admire a character like that. I kept thinking she was someone I would have very much liked to know, that's how real she seemed.
I can forgive a lot of an author who can write a character like that.