Scan barcode
A review by esdeecarlson
In the Hall with the Knife by Diana Peterfreund
2.0
2.5 stars
A serviceable little snowed-in murder mystery, which unfortunately cemented that YA murder mysteries are Not My Thing.
The mystery itself was pretty decent in terms of who- and why-dunnit, but I wasn’t enormously impressed by the execution. Namely, that it’s obvious who did it if you just look at the chapter headings and see the only Clue character who doesn’t get a POV chapter.
Furthermore, I didn’t like the fact that most of the murderer possibilities were outside characters (a janitor who left the premises, townie looters, a twin brother) because, well, this is a Clue mystery—the whole point is that the murderer is one of the named characters at the table with you.
One of my favorite things about an isolated murder mystery is the way that every character has *something* to hide, some secret they don’t want getting out, and all of this is uncovered throughout the plot. This is true for In the Hall with the Knife, but it didn’t satisfy me because for many characters we are given the fact that they have a dark secret but not the intricacies of it (i.e. Vaughn’s twin brother, Orchid’s stalker, Mustard’s past at military school). It seemed to me that this was because the author was ‘saving’ a more satisfying exploration of those secrets for plot fodder in later books in the series, which was just disappointing; I wanted new secrets in later books, not drawn-out elongations of the ones we’ve already heard about.
Furthermore, Clue as a game has the potential for excellent characters; they’re full of possibility, allowed to be a little larger than life. I remember inventing complex interweaving relationships for them when I played with the board game as a child. Yet, these kids bored me. They didn’t feel like fully rounded characters, and I didn’t care for or about them.
I will not be continuing with the series.
A serviceable little snowed-in murder mystery, which unfortunately cemented that YA murder mysteries are Not My Thing.
The mystery itself was pretty decent in terms of who- and why-dunnit, but I wasn’t enormously impressed by the execution. Namely, that it’s obvious who did it if you just look at the chapter headings and see the only Clue character who doesn’t get a POV chapter.
Furthermore, I didn’t like the fact that most of the murderer possibilities were outside characters (a janitor who left the premises, townie looters, a twin brother) because, well, this is a Clue mystery—the whole point is that the murderer is one of the named characters at the table with you.
One of my favorite things about an isolated murder mystery is the way that every character has *something* to hide, some secret they don’t want getting out, and all of this is uncovered throughout the plot. This is true for In the Hall with the Knife, but it didn’t satisfy me because for many characters we are given the fact that they have a dark secret but not the intricacies of it (i.e. Vaughn’s twin brother, Orchid’s stalker, Mustard’s past at military school). It seemed to me that this was because the author was ‘saving’ a more satisfying exploration of those secrets for plot fodder in later books in the series, which was just disappointing; I wanted new secrets in later books, not drawn-out elongations of the ones we’ve already heard about.
Furthermore, Clue as a game has the potential for excellent characters; they’re full of possibility, allowed to be a little larger than life. I remember inventing complex interweaving relationships for them when I played with the board game as a child. Yet, these kids bored me. They didn’t feel like fully rounded characters, and I didn’t care for or about them.
I will not be continuing with the series.