Elaine Mercer has been a voracious crime novel reader for over a quarter century and a keen bibliophile her entire life. Her choice of house was dictated purely by the volume of books it could hold, which currently fit bulging wall to wall bookshelves. She has no intention of downsizing...
Oh dear. This should have been a winner. What a brilliant premise – murder at a literary festival in midsummer, with over-inflated egos, prima donnas, tears and tantrums: Agatha does Midsomer it was not.
There are too many characters, most just throwaway background noise, and the clutter got in the way. I had to keep checking back who such-and-such was just in case they ‘whodunnit’ but at the same time, I just didn’t care about any of them.
I didn’t enjoy the crime writer as chief investigator, it was fairly obvious early on who must be first murderer, and the author himself “hated...the ‘traditional ‘group denouement’” of the Poiro-esque unveiling. The ‘whydoit?’ was at least unsuspected, but I couldn’t empathise with any of the characters.
This would have worked better written for laughs or at least comic-drama. I kept expecting an Agatha Raisin investigator to blunder in. It has been referred to as ‘a wicked send-up...’. Perhaps the humour was too subtle for this particular reader.
