Scan barcode
A review by tombomp
Coroner's Pidgin by Margery Allingham
3.0
Good mystery book, nothing special. From like 1/3 of the way through the plot moves along at a very good pace and it was very "just one more page". But by the end I felt kind of confused. There's a *lot* of elements introduced and most of them tie together but it's not completely neat and I felt there were some things unexplained, and I feel like there's no way it's a "fair play" mystery (although that might just be me not being very smart). Ending spoilers re what I didn't understand
Instead of giving like a full summing up near the end it's mostly implied. Campion mentions the policeman is going to be explaining why Chivers tried to kill Bush and I was thinking... well why did she? Their relationship appears suddenly in the last 5% of the book as the thing that ties everything together but it makes very little sense. If she hated him, why was she willing to do all his dirty work for years and years and then only suddenly try and kill him at the end? Like I say I'm probably missing a bunch it was just... weird. Because I'm not smart I'd have appreciated more explicit detail
Otherwise pretty solid - nothing special to recommend it, although the setting of near the end of the war was pretty interesting and I liked the period details a lot.
Spoiler
What was the whole roses/pearls thing about? It's really strange, the explanation given is Chivers sent roses and pearls to Moppet for years because... she wanted to feel powerful? Or something. And then Moppet sent notes back like "I don't want this but thanks" every single year? And then Johnny remembered that he'd sent something like that to her 7 years ago and got really mad seeing it again, but refused to say why? It was just... really bizarre and although I get red herrings it didn't feel it was handled well.Instead of giving like a full summing up near the end it's mostly implied. Campion mentions the policeman is going to be explaining why Chivers tried to kill Bush and I was thinking... well why did she? Their relationship appears suddenly in the last 5% of the book as the thing that ties everything together but it makes very little sense. If she hated him, why was she willing to do all his dirty work for years and years and then only suddenly try and kill him at the end? Like I say I'm probably missing a bunch it was just... weird. Because I'm not smart I'd have appreciated more explicit detail
Otherwise pretty solid - nothing special to recommend it, although the setting of near the end of the war was pretty interesting and I liked the period details a lot.