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radella_hardwick 's review for:
Murder on Line One
by Jeremy Vine
You should've seen the gushy draft opening I wrote for this review before properly beginning this ARC that I was so excited to receive.
Even at 88%, I was going to say that the solid character-work made up for the relatively obvious puzzle solution. The culprit was so obvious to me at 70% that I thought it must be a red herring. Not only was it not a red herring but our sleuths believed the fall-guy was guilty for 3 months until a flash of divine inspiration, 3 months in which the culprit remained a fixture of the sleuths' landscape.
However, what eradicated my goodwill towards this book is that, after crafting wonderfully complex heroes and a nuanced secondary villain, Vine entirely cops out on the culprit's motive. Worse yet, for me, it's exactly the same cop-out motive as the Charity Shop Detective Agency. Now, I hated Boland's characters, so there I was in sympathy with the killer. Here, it feels like Vine should have committed to the culprit being a psychopath or monomaniac but, instead, we get this paper-thin justification that the characters treat as rock-solid.
What annoys me most about Vine and Boland framing intergenerational wealth inequality is that they aren't Boomers expressing their own fear. They are white cis Gen X men who assume that Gen Z's hatred for old people is so well established that their audience will accept it without question. As someone only 5 years older than the culprit, the resentment I and my peers have for old people rattling around in houses that are too big for them doesn't translate into animosity towards individual pensioners. We wish that "an Englishman's home is his castle" was less true and old people would look at housing as a social asset, not their personal property. There's a lot of steps to get from that to murder and neither of these books bother examining the intermediate steps.
I was inclined to continue with the series as and when because I like the characters and there's decent representation of disability due to the vagaries of life, rather than born that way. However, I really don't buy where the character relationships leave off and the disability representation is repetitive and shallow.
*~*
By the way, with regard to landscape, Vine is trying very hard to check off places you've heard of: Sidmouth, Topsham, Exmoor, Exeter and even a tor on the edge of Dartmoor. But it feels like a tourist's checklist of Devon, there's no sense of affection for these places. For example, why do the characters go to a fictional Indian restaurant in Budleigh Salterton (last home of Hilary Mantel, which isn't mentioned), when there's a perfectly good Indian restaurant in Sidmouth (I've eaten there)? The only thing we're told about this Indian restaurant is that the car park is superior to the food, so why did the characters leave the town they all live in to meet there, except it lets him tick off another recognisable Devon place name?
I haven't lived in Devon since I graduated from Exeter University almost 12 years ago and have only visited Sidmouth twice for the week-long folk festival and I've got more anecdotes about these locations than characters who have lived there all their lives.
Even at 88%, I was going to say that the solid character-work made up for the relatively obvious puzzle solution. The culprit was so obvious to me at 70% that I thought it must be a red herring. Not only was it not a red herring but our sleuths believed the fall-guy was guilty for 3 months until a flash of divine inspiration, 3 months in which the culprit remained a fixture of the sleuths' landscape.
However, what eradicated my goodwill towards this book is that, after crafting wonderfully complex heroes and a nuanced secondary villain, Vine entirely cops out on the culprit's motive. Worse yet, for me, it's exactly the same cop-out motive as the Charity Shop Detective Agency. Now, I hated Boland's characters, so there I was in sympathy with the killer. Here, it feels like Vine should have committed to the culprit being a psychopath or monomaniac but, instead, we get this paper-thin justification that the characters treat as rock-solid.
I was inclined to continue with the series as and when because I like the characters and there's decent representation of disability due to the vagaries of life, rather than born that way. However, I really don't buy where the character relationships leave off and the disability representation is repetitive and shallow.
*~*
By the way, with regard to landscape, Vine is trying very hard to check off places you've heard of: Sidmouth, Topsham, Exmoor, Exeter and even a tor on the edge of Dartmoor. But it feels like a tourist's checklist of Devon, there's no sense of affection for these places. For example, why do the characters go to a fictional Indian restaurant in Budleigh Salterton (last home of Hilary Mantel, which isn't mentioned), when there's a perfectly good Indian restaurant in Sidmouth (I've eaten there)? The only thing we're told about this Indian restaurant is that the car park is superior to the food, so why did the characters leave the town they all live in to meet there, except it lets him tick off another recognisable Devon place name?
I haven't lived in Devon since I graduated from Exeter University almost 12 years ago and have only visited Sidmouth twice for the week-long folk festival and I've got more anecdotes about these locations than characters who have lived there all their lives.