Reviews

Head of a Traveler by Nicholas Blake

caroparr's review

2.0

I grew up with this gruesome edition among my parents' extensive collection of mysteries, so I must have read it at some point in my misspent youth. This time around, I found the mystery tedious (I'm not a fan of timetable mysteries because of the repetitive details), the characters unattractive, and the dated attitudes toward rape and dwarfism repellent. I do think there are better Strangeways novels out there, but this one was alternately unpleasant and boring.

bev_reads_mysteries's review against another edition

2.0

It may just be the mood I was in yesterday--I spent my morning in a meeting where I felt like the speaker was an adult in a Charlie Brown special. Nothing he said sounded like real language to me. And then last night when I was finishing up Nicholas Blake's Head of a Traveller, he just wasn't making sense to me.

Spoiler

I definitely wasn't buying the whole "everybody seems to be in a conspiracy to protect the Great Poet" thing nor "the Great Poet sacrifices himself at the end to protect his wife" (whom he doesn't even love) thing.

And I'm afraid that, much as I generally love Blake's writing and plotting, the whole story just came across as a convoluted mess. Much more convoluted than necessary for the purposes of mystifying the reader--I didn't feel mystified. I felt frustrated with everything from the opener (Nigel Strangeway's journal entry--in first person present while the rest of the novel is in past tense) to the bizarre characterizations (a gibbering dwarf? seriously?). This one was quite simply not up to Blake's usual par--at least not for me. Others have rated it quite highly, so your mileage may vary.

First posted as a mini-review on my blog My Reader's Block>My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

annarella's review against another edition

4.0

I find this book bewildering and entertaining at same time with a bit of gothic in between.
I really appreciated the story, the characters and the plot twist. This a story of the Golden Age and it has pros and cons of the era.
Recommended.