Reviews

The Maelstrom by Frank Froest

krikketgirl's review against another edition

4.0

I was surprised by how hard it was to pin down the time frame of this book, given that it was written in 1916. There were little clues here and there, but the action was pretty tough to fix to a specific point in time. The Maelstrom is a police procedural of a type, though it isn't strictly written from the police point of view. I found its treatment of detection to be much more realistic than is usually the case, and Froest straddled nicely the line between the cerebral main detective and the strength of the police force. There were plenty of tough characters, though it never quite became hardboiled (which was fine by me). Towards the middle, the book did start to drag a bit, which is probably due to the fact that it is a procedural: we go with the police step by step, instead of skipping the boring bits.

I think what will bring me back to this one is the traces of humor and the bits of melodrama; if I found some of the events in a current novel, I would roll my eyes, but given the time frame of this book, they were endearing.