I wish I'd liked this more. The characters were interesting and well drawn, the prose top notch, and the mystery interesting. But the structure alienated me. People are killed and police inspectors investigate. Chapters are presented from the perspectives of victims, killers, and inspectors, which explain who they were and what their actions were, but, in the case of the victims, often not why they died -- perhaps because they didn't really know the reason. Maybe if I'd locked myself in an empty room for a day, I could have held all the threads in my mind and figured out better how they wove together.
You know, I finished this book about a week ago and have been thinking about why it didn't grab me and hang on tight. All of the elements were there for a great read, interesting story, interesting characters with mysterious backstories, and everything hung together but for some reason something was missing until I read your comments. Maybe having each chapter narrated by different characters did take me out of the flow of the story, sometimes just when things were getting verrrry interesting. I'm glad I read it, and thought that Matilde Oliver was an interesting character.
ReplyDeleteCathy
Cathy