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eserafina42's review
3.0
Entertaining enough, and kept me reading, but two things drag it down in my rating.
1) For some reason this seems to be a feature of the Golden Age mystery, but the women - at least the "good" ones, particularly the MC's love interest, always seem to be described in this over-the-top, over-romanticized way. "He could not tear himself away while she was there, though; it was absolute joy to know that she was present, to feast his eyes on the wealth of dark, bronze hair—bronze that the sun, kissing, turned to burnished copper; on the delicate pink and white of the half- averted cheek, to hear her pretty, caressing tones as she talked to Mary Ann." Not to mention snarky comments about women in general (always excepting the love interest, of course), even when the author is female. Needless to say, of course, the absolute worst thing you can say about a woman is that she is "masculine." About one of the "bad" women: "There was something in the glance of her big black eyes, a masculine strength about the modelling of chin and jaw, which he found almost repellent."
2) The coincidences - OMG, the coincidences!
1) For some reason this seems to be a feature of the Golden Age mystery, but the women - at least the "good" ones, particularly the MC's love interest, always seem to be described in this over-the-top, over-romanticized way. "He could not tear himself away while she was there, though; it was absolute joy to know that she was present, to feast his eyes on the wealth of dark, bronze hair—bronze that the sun, kissing, turned to burnished copper; on the delicate pink and white of the half- averted cheek, to hear her pretty, caressing tones as she talked to Mary Ann." Not to mention snarky comments about women in general (always excepting the love interest, of course), even when the author is female. Needless to say, of course, the absolute worst thing you can say about a woman is that she is "masculine." About one of the "bad" women: "There was something in the glance of her big black eyes, a masculine strength about the modelling of chin and jaw, which he found almost repellent."
2) The coincidences - OMG, the coincidences!
Spoiler
The victim just happens to hire as a housekeeper the mother of the woman he had eloped with years before, who believes that he ruined her daughter and that the daughter is now dead. The doctor who lives near the victim is an old school friend of the housekeeper's old nursling, with whom she takes a position after the murder. A woman is killed in a railway crash who knew the victim and just happens to resemble the woman who visited him just before the murder closely enough that the police stop looking for her for two years. And she is killed in the same crash that maims the doctor's friend.quietjenn's review
3.0
I suspect my three stars is generous, since a month later I barely remember this book and what does stick out is what I found utterly ridiculous about it ...
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