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A review by brettt
It Happens in the Dark by Carol O'Connell
1.0
With The Chalk Girl, Carol O'Connell's signature character Kathy Mallory became a little less quirky and a little more annoying, as did O'Connell's story about her. In It Happens in the Dark, things go pretty much completely off the rails. O'Connell seems to lose control of her plot, characters and storyline early on and never regains it. Mallory herself is less of a character in the story than a cipher the other characters react to -- usually in awe or fear or moonie puppy-dog crush.
The story concerns a murder -- or is it? -- at the performance of a play, happening on a night which followed someone else in the audience dying. Mallory has to investigate the weird world of actors, playwrights, critics, stagehands and producers, and her notable lack of patience for ordinary folks is stretched thin by the eccentric theater crowd. Stir in a decades-old mystery surrounding a family murdered in their home, and you have a knot that Lt. Columbo would have looked at and said, "I'm putting in for vacation."
A half-dozen rereads are required to know what goes on every dozen pages, and the payoff is meager enough to be worthy of very little of that work. Mallory fans showed a lot of disappointment with Chalk Girl, and it's hard to imagine O'Connell winning many of them back with the gooey mess she offers in Happens.
Original available here.
The story concerns a murder -- or is it? -- at the performance of a play, happening on a night which followed someone else in the audience dying. Mallory has to investigate the weird world of actors, playwrights, critics, stagehands and producers, and her notable lack of patience for ordinary folks is stretched thin by the eccentric theater crowd. Stir in a decades-old mystery surrounding a family murdered in their home, and you have a knot that Lt. Columbo would have looked at and said, "I'm putting in for vacation."
A half-dozen rereads are required to know what goes on every dozen pages, and the payoff is meager enough to be worthy of very little of that work. Mallory fans showed a lot of disappointment with Chalk Girl, and it's hard to imagine O'Connell winning many of them back with the gooey mess she offers in Happens.
Original available here.