Maura (maura853) -
Let's call this "Reaching the end of my patience with Sophie Hannah."
Sophie Hannah is the Mistress of the "great hook," the opening idea that is so crazy that you simply have to read on to find out how she's going to explain it. Scenarios in which the crime is impossible, the only possible perpetrators have cast-iron, air-tight alibis, and the method and motive are so high-concept that they make Midsummer Murders look like a true crime documentary. Like ... here, for example: six couples are holidaying at a high-end resort when one of their number is murdered. The murderer must be one of them -- but they all swear blind that they were together for the few crucial minutes when the murder takes place. How was it done ...?
Spoiler: cheating, that's how. Besides cheating, here Hannah seems to have doubled down on some of her least likeable writing quirks: skipping back and forth in time, giving whole chapters of first-person narration to annoying characters who just whitter on and on and on, as if whittering is somehow an endearing character trait in itself.
Two stars, because it did force me to read on. And one line did make me laugh: describing the home of the murder victim, a very unpleasant women, Hannah describes "floor-to-ceiling shelving that displayed small groups of books, huddled together with their pages facing the room instead of their spines ..."
She had it coming ...
Sophie Hannah is the Mistress of the "great hook," the opening idea that is so crazy that you simply have to read on to find out how she's going to explain it. Scenarios in which the crime is impossible, the only possible perpetrators have cast-iron, air-tight alibis, and the method and motive are so high-concept that they make Midsummer Murders look like a true crime documentary. Like ... here, for example: six couples are holidaying at a high-end resort when one of their number is murdered. The murderer must be one of them -- but they all swear blind that they were together for the few crucial minutes when the murder takes place. How was it done ...?
Spoiler: cheating, that's how. Besides cheating, here Hannah seems to have doubled down on some of her least likeable writing quirks: skipping back and forth in time, giving whole chapters of first-person narration to annoying characters who just whitter on and on and on, as if whittering is somehow an endearing character trait in itself.
Two stars, because it did force me to read on. And one line did make me laugh: describing the home of the murder victim, a very unpleasant women, Hannah describes "floor-to-ceiling shelving that displayed small groups of books, huddled together with their pages facing the room instead of their spines ..."
She had it coming ...
