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A review by jessmanners
The Dead Lie Down by Sophie Hannah
2.0
Okay, so, I had a lot of problems with this book...
1. I am all for exposition--most of the joy of formal detective stories is the final parlor room scene, but you also need to have little satisfying epiphanies along the way. I am not a stupid person, but I felt myself losing the thread a lot, not totally sure what revelations were supposed to mean or why they mattered, and I feel like Hannah sensed this was a problem, too, because
2. She does this odd thing where she has one narrator being told a piece of the puzzle, and then will have the detectives in the next section, or the section after that, figure out that same piece (or a piece of the piece), and while I can see how that could be interesting in theory (there's that study that showed that people enjoy stories better when they know the plot ahead of time, right?), and it lets us see the detection happen in real time (I mean, not actually, but you know what I mean), it just feels, well, redundant. And then!
3. I had a hard time understanding why the detectives were invested in the first place. I mean, we the readers know that there has to be more than a weird made-up crime, because otherwise there wouldn't be a novel, but...I couldn't figure out what it was that was supposed to have intrigued Waterhouse and Zailer so much that they'd go rogue to solve it.
4. Speaking of the solution, while I did enjoy the above mentioned parlor scene, and it did take me a while to catch on to the twist, it does feel a bit lame that the super violent, possibly insane, unlikeable character ended up...well, being all of those things. And while getting the bad guy out of the way does allow for the proper formal detective happily ever after to take place...
5. I couldn't buy into Ruth and Aidan's relationship. I get that they're both damaged and they need each other and all that, and that, more importantly, they act as foils for W&Z, but it just felt prickly and miserable, even in the flashbacks to the Before Times. and finally!
6. I really can't get behind the W&Z relationship. I think the point of the engagement scene is to show that it's only the gross narrow minded normies who think that this relationship is doomed, but I'm sorry, it just feels objectively SAD. Now, to be fair, it is entirely possible that the will-they-won't-they stuff that presumably happened in the first two books is enough to make people ship them, but by the time I got to them (not my fault audiobooks of the first two in the series seem not to exist!), it just feels awkward. These are two people who don't seem to particularly know or like each other, and all the protesting too much stuff doesn't sway me...I kept thinking that this must be how it would feel to start watching Gilmore Girls in season five (or maybe six). There's no way you could root for Lorelai and Luke when you actually see them together as a couple...
Anyway, that's that. I'll no doubt listen to the fifth in the series at some point. I'm full of wise decisions.
1. I am all for exposition--most of the joy of formal detective stories is the final parlor room scene, but you also need to have little satisfying epiphanies along the way. I am not a stupid person, but I felt myself losing the thread a lot, not totally sure what revelations were supposed to mean or why they mattered, and I feel like Hannah sensed this was a problem, too, because
2. She does this odd thing where she has one narrator being told a piece of the puzzle, and then will have the detectives in the next section, or the section after that, figure out that same piece (or a piece of the piece), and while I can see how that could be interesting in theory (there's that study that showed that people enjoy stories better when they know the plot ahead of time, right?), and it lets us see the detection happen in real time (I mean, not actually, but you know what I mean), it just feels, well, redundant. And then!
3. I had a hard time understanding why the detectives were invested in the first place. I mean, we the readers know that there has to be more than a weird made-up crime, because otherwise there wouldn't be a novel, but...I couldn't figure out what it was that was supposed to have intrigued Waterhouse and Zailer so much that they'd go rogue to solve it.
4. Speaking of the solution, while I did enjoy the above mentioned parlor scene, and it did take me a while to catch on to the twist, it does feel a bit lame that the super violent, possibly insane, unlikeable character ended up...well, being all of those things. And while getting the bad guy out of the way does allow for the proper formal detective happily ever after to take place...
5. I couldn't buy into Ruth and Aidan's relationship. I get that they're both damaged and they need each other and all that, and that, more importantly, they act as foils for W&Z, but it just felt prickly and miserable, even in the flashbacks to the Before Times. and finally!
6. I really can't get behind the W&Z relationship. I think the point of the engagement scene is to show that it's only the gross narrow minded normies who think that this relationship is doomed, but I'm sorry, it just feels objectively SAD. Now, to be fair, it is entirely possible that the will-they-won't-they stuff that presumably happened in the first two books is enough to make people ship them, but by the time I got to them (not my fault audiobooks of the first two in the series seem not to exist!), it just feels awkward. These are two people who don't seem to particularly know or like each other, and all the protesting too much stuff doesn't sway me...I kept thinking that this must be how it would feel to start watching Gilmore Girls in season five (or maybe six). There's no way you could root for Lorelai and Luke when you actually see them together as a couple...
Anyway, that's that. I'll no doubt listen to the fifth in the series at some point. I'm full of wise decisions.