Tag: Mystery

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith

One of the pleasures of reading deeply into a series is the sense of stories arising naturally from the personalities of the characters as the author has shown and developed them over the course of many books. The banter between Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin is freighted with but not weighed down by the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/26/the-minor-adjustment-beauty-salon-by-alexander-mccall-smith/

Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials by Ovidia Yu

So many fiction series start out well then hit a sort of sophomore slump: Ovidia Yu’s Aunty Lee mystery series manages not only to avoid this pitfall but to improve (vastly, in my opinion) on her debut. While the food writing and observations regarding Singaporean mores and personalities are as excellent as before, the mystery …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/12/aunty-lees-deadly-specials-by-ovidia-yu/

Mycroft Holmes by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

Let’s get this out of the way first: the book is a total Mary Sue. Which doesn’t make it a bad read, but every time I pictured Cyrus, I totally envisioned Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (tho since I like the guy, that’s not a bad thing.) It was interesting how the traditional roles of best friend and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/02/08/mycroft-holmes-by-kareem-abdul-jabbar-and-anna-waterhouse/

The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

I usually find Liane Moriarty novels superlative, but this one fell short for me. Here’s my main problem with The Last Anniversary: it’s fairly clear from the outset that Grace has post-natal depression, yet at no time in the proceedings does she acknowledge this as true. It’s absolutely maddening. I also haaaaated Laura. I suppose …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/23/the-last-anniversary-by-liane-moriarty/

The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad #2) by Tana French

Tana French writes some really terrific, atmospheric fiction. She’s good at untangling complicated emotions and relationships and presenting them to the reader in a sympathetic fashion. But oh my God, this was the most ludicrous mystery setup I’ve ever read. It was so bad that I’m confident not even post-Meloni Law & Order: SVU would …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/12/09/the-likeness-dublin-murder-squad-2-by-tana-french/

Aunty Lee’s Delights (Singaporean Mystery #1) by Ovidia Yu

I’ve babbled on about my issues with Malaysian writers before (nutshelled: I want them to be super good, but when they are, I immediately hate myself for not writing, too,) and with this book, I realized that those issues extend to Singaporean writers, as well. I think it might be due to the two countries …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/10/18/aunty-lees-delights-singaporean-mystery-1-by-ovidia-yu/

The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins

I think I would have liked this book more were it not marketed as the next Gone Girl. On its own, it’s a decent mystery novel with an excellent framing device, but I was expecting something far more diabolical and cautionary than the “don’t marry a psychopath” takeaway which, while good advice, is also fairly …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/09/01/the-girl-on-the-train-by-paula-hawkins/

In The Woods by Tana French

There was a lot I enjoyed about this book, but I had two very large problems with it, both to do with Rob Ryan. The first is fairly spoilertastic, and less to do with his character than with what I felt was a strange choice on the part of the author. Essentially, you never find …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/08/21/in-the-woods-by-tana-french/

Paper Towns by John Green

I think that if I hadn’t read and loved The Fault In Our Stars first, I’d likely be more charitable to this book, which was pretty good overall, just not as good. And I guess that’s unfair to Paper Towns, which is a pretty good mystery on its own (and I really liked how convincingly …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/29/paper-towns-by-john-green/

Lock In by John Scalzi

A long time ago, John Grisham came to the bookstore where I was working to sign copies of his second book from a major publisher, The Pelican Brief. His first, The Firm, had been an enormous hit, and there was every indication that the second would sell in mass quantities as well. No movies had …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/06/28/lock-in-by-john-scalzi-2/