Review by robinwalter - The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman

robinwalter 's review for:

The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman by Moray Dalton

3.0

dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book is the first for which I have felt compelled to leave a content warning on Storygraph. Reading it was an unpleasant and painful experience.

The most disturbing part of this book for me was its heavy reliance on vicious cruelty toward children, or rather a child, as an integral plot device. The child in question is physically tortured on more than one occasion, subject to extreme emotional stress and repeatedly targeted as the perpetrator or accomplice in serious crimes by senior police officers. In all of the instances where the child suffers physical violence, that violence was passively facilitated by his own mother, and in no instance does she show any real awareness of the depth and intensity of the emotional and psychological trauma her son endured.

This fixation throughout the story on harming a specific child was the primary reason I found it difficult to finish. Another repellent feature was the sheer stupidity of the child's mother in allowing her son to be abused.

In one instance she almost physically forced him against his will into the company of people who subsequently tortured him, on another she left him alone in the house overnight which enabled a different set of torturers to inflict pain and injury. I can only hope that Moray Dalton took better care of her own child than her character did here. It may be a reflection of my own modern sensitivities, but the fact that, with the exception of Collier, no one cared about the extreme nature of the physical and emotional violence directed at this child left me flabbergasted.

As for the actual murders themselves, the way the Chief Constable and his senior officer targeted a 12-year-old child as a likely murderer in two different murders was not only bizarrely implausible given the facts of the two crimes, but a little worrying coming after "Harriet Hall". in that story, Collier has to deal with an inimical Chief Constable who called him in reluctantly, viewed him with suspicion and overrode his authority on several instances. In this story, all of the above is true, with the added elements that the said Chief Constable and his assistant are maliciously stupid. I’m hoping that Dalton doesn’t return to this particular trope too often in future stories.

The resolution of the multiple murders is interesting. It was particularly interesting that in the case of one of the murders it was solved for Collier completely by accident when he happened to be present as an unexpected witness gave testimony. Collier’s own police work was central to the solution of the other murders in the story.

In summary, this was a very dark story indeed. It was full of anger futilty and bitterness. The bitterness and futility even extend to the ultimate resolution, and taint Collier’s usually sunny disposition. The sentiments about the viciousness, futility and stupidity of war are sentiments I wholeheartedly endorse. That Dalton chose to express that bitterness and spleen by making a child the repeated victim of viciousness and stupidity is not something I can endorse.

In his introduction Curtis Evans says that the child in question and his mother feature again in a later Collier story, and having finished this book I am disappointed by that, because I would not want to ‘meet’ the poor child’s mother ever again.

Content Warnings