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A review by ashleylm
With a Bare Bodkin by Cyril Hare
4.0
Very enjoyable. He waits quite a while to introduce a corpse (I think around the 70% mark!) so if you're not able to delay that particular gratification, you might prefer a corpse-first novelist. As usual with a mystery I'm happy if I can tell the characters apart, and I could do so fairly quickly. I was puzzled by the purpose of the people (something to do with pins) but I don't suppose it really mattered--perhaps it made sense back in the day, or perhaps it was always irrelevent, and they could have been in charge of "doodads" or "wickets" or "gizmos" for all the difference it would have made.
Not especially exciting, of course, but a pleasant thing to read before bed. There's something a bit off about Mr. Hare's works, like he'd read one or two mysteries but not enough to get a sense of all the genre conventions, and I actually like that.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).
Not especially exciting, of course, but a pleasant thing to read before bed. There's something a bit off about Mr. Hare's works, like he'd read one or two mysteries but not enough to get a sense of all the genre conventions, and I actually like that.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).