Last book club selection of 2010 or worst of 2010.? It’s a hard decision and I think, to play it safe, I’d award this book both prizes, last and worst.
I do grant that she’s a pretty young girl, or do I mean a pretty, young girl.? Her book cover picture seems a bit out of date for a woman in her fifties. Meow, Peter. Anyway, we should support our local Bay Area talent. So, on the good side, I liked the concept of a series set in Paris. A female detective is wandering a bit from the genre expectations, but other writers have plowed this ground before.
Now maybe she tried writing travel guides to Paris, or maybe she just liked to research her travels to France thoroughly, and maybe she was looking for a way to cover the expenses by writing a book. She’s made it. They sell. She’s assured a lifetime income stream from this venture and brought the money back to the Bay Area. More power to her.
However, I feel that her writing style is unreadable. One of her traits is to constantly add extraneous descriptive information, digressing from the plot advancement. We don’t need to know that her flat’s landing is black and white tile, nor that her bedroom has parquet flooring. Sometimes this sort of information is interesting in coloring a scene, putting the reader there. However mysteries tend to drop these sorts of hints in building a plot.
Another major flaw is Aimée herself.! American or French.? Can you imagine Sam Spade running around San Francisco; thinking historical, tour guide thoughts at every passing building, street, and store.? Of course not, R.Q. People who live in a city, don’t think about it the way Cara portrays Aimée. At best it is misplaced tour book verbiage; at worst it is blatant word count fluffing.
While we’re on Aimée, I never developed any feeling for her. This was a woman who had a quickie one-night stand with an inappropriate ex-lover, agreed to marry him ???; and was so moved by ?something?, that she spent the rest of the book chasing his killer. On the good side, she got beat up a lot – hard-boiled detectives always get beat up. But she was mousy in her interactions with the good guys and the bad guys – we expect hard, sassy retorts from our detectives, just asking for another slug.
The story was vapid as far as being a mystery novel. Actually the complications might have been handled well by someone like John LeCarré, but it was far beyond Cara Black’s capabilities. The side characters, even Yves, were only superficially developed – interrelationships not there at all. As I have implied already, I agree with Rouffillac, she should have stayed home, out of trouble. Stay at home and see a shrink – back off of the casual sex – quit playing Mata Hari -- and go back to San Francisco.
I do grant that she’s a pretty young girl, or do I mean a pretty, young girl.? Her book cover picture seems a bit out of date for a woman in her fifties. Meow, Peter. Anyway, we should support our local Bay Area talent. So, on the good side, I liked the concept of a series set in Paris. A female detective is wandering a bit from the genre expectations, but other writers have plowed this ground before.
Now maybe she tried writing travel guides to Paris, or maybe she just liked to research her travels to France thoroughly, and maybe she was looking for a way to cover the expenses by writing a book. She’s made it. They sell. She’s assured a lifetime income stream from this venture and brought the money back to the Bay Area. More power to her.
However, I feel that her writing style is unreadable. One of her traits is to constantly add extraneous descriptive information, digressing from the plot advancement. We don’t need to know that her flat’s landing is black and white tile, nor that her bedroom has parquet flooring. Sometimes this sort of information is interesting in coloring a scene, putting the reader there. However mysteries tend to drop these sorts of hints in building a plot.
Another major flaw is Aimée herself.! American or French.? Can you imagine Sam Spade running around San Francisco; thinking historical, tour guide thoughts at every passing building, street, and store.? Of course not, R.Q. People who live in a city, don’t think about it the way Cara portrays Aimée. At best it is misplaced tour book verbiage; at worst it is blatant word count fluffing.
While we’re on Aimée, I never developed any feeling for her. This was a woman who had a quickie one-night stand with an inappropriate ex-lover, agreed to marry him ???; and was so moved by ?something?, that she spent the rest of the book chasing his killer. On the good side, she got beat up a lot – hard-boiled detectives always get beat up. But she was mousy in her interactions with the good guys and the bad guys – we expect hard, sassy retorts from our detectives, just asking for another slug.
The story was vapid as far as being a mystery novel. Actually the complications might have been handled well by someone like John LeCarré, but it was far beyond Cara Black’s capabilities. The side characters, even Yves, were only superficially developed – interrelationships not there at all. As I have implied already, I agree with Rouffillac, she should have stayed home, out of trouble. Stay at home and see a shrink – back off of the casual sex – quit playing Mata Hari -- and go back to San Francisco.
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