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A review by fihli
Debout les morts by Fred Vargas
3.0
3 stars
Debout les Morts is a crime novel that I started reading in school almost a decade ago, and I’m sure that we never finished reading it in class. French class really was one of the few classes where literally noone was motivated at all, ah, good old days.
Well, anyways. I’m not sure that I enjoyed this much, although I think that this has to do a lot with the fact that I’m just not as proficient in French as I’m in English and reading this took me a considerably longer time than it would have in German or in English. But although this may have played a part in this book feeling incredibly tedious, I think that the bigger reason is that the story has a lot of filler content. Filler that is supposed to flesh out the characters, I guess, since this is the first installment in the series. Thing is though, I felt very apathetic to the characters like I do with most detective characters in stories (I don’t care that much for Hercules Poirot or Miss Marple, for example) I care more about the mystery, if that makes sense. So I felt my eyes glaze over time and time again and had to force myself to concentrate – not a good sign.
Also, while I normally don't care about swearing in books either way, I felt that this had way too much swearing which started to annoy me pretty early on.
About the story: It was believable enough, but I thought that the murderer was pretty obvious. So obvious in fact, that I started to doubt myself after a big revelation, only to be disappointed at the end. Yeah, yeah, I didn’t come close to predict the resolution, but I think that the author also didn’t make the motives apparent enough for most readers to just guess at it. Which is a good or a bad thing, depending on how you like your crime stories, I guess.
Debout les Morts is a crime novel that I started reading in school almost a decade ago, and I’m sure that we never finished reading it in class. French class really was one of the few classes where literally noone was motivated at all, ah, good old days.
Well, anyways. I’m not sure that I enjoyed this much, although I think that this has to do a lot with the fact that I’m just not as proficient in French as I’m in English and reading this took me a considerably longer time than it would have in German or in English. But although this may have played a part in this book feeling incredibly tedious, I think that the bigger reason is that the story has a lot of filler content. Filler that is supposed to flesh out the characters, I guess, since this is the first installment in the series. Thing is though, I felt very apathetic to the characters like I do with most detective characters in stories (I don’t care that much for Hercules Poirot or Miss Marple, for example) I care more about the mystery, if that makes sense. So I felt my eyes glaze over time and time again and had to force myself to concentrate – not a good sign.
Also, while I normally don't care about swearing in books either way, I felt that this had way too much swearing which started to annoy me pretty early on.
About the story: It was believable enough, but I thought that the murderer was pretty obvious. So obvious in fact, that I started to doubt myself after a big revelation, only to be disappointed at the end. Yeah, yeah, I didn’t come close to predict the resolution, but I think that the author also didn’t make the motives apparent enough for most readers to just guess at it. Which is a good or a bad thing, depending on how you like your crime stories, I guess.