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A review by sofijakryz
Booked For Murder by Val McDermid
3.0
So, another story by Val McDermid. I usually like her crime fiction because of interesting twists and good balance between mysterious and creepy, also, because of warm, humanly characters. I liked “Booked for Murder” but it had some limitations.
“Booked for Murder” is yet another story about Lindsay Gordon, a crime-investigating journalist. Her life away from Britain is suddenly interrupted. Her friend, a teen-/YA literature writer Penny has been murdered in a creepy and unconventional method, strangely, a replica of a murder method described in her new book. Problem is, the book’s not only not published yet – it’s still in progress, the manuscripts only seen by a handful of people, one of them being Penny’s partner and another close friend of Lindsay.
Story per se was quite interesting. What I liked less though, that it’s quite difficult to calculate the right suspect until quite late in the book. Not because I like the plots to be predictable but because certain vital information is shared quite late in the book, almost deus ex machina, rather than just the reader getting lost among red herrings.
This book was clearly targeted at LGBT community. Which is great per se, but there is a plainly visible disbalance between the numbers of female and male characters. This disbalance doesn’t feel natural, unless one lives in a social bubble. It’s fashionable to nail Tolkien to a cross for being “sexist” these days (please read shounen before doing so), but, had I not read McDermid’s other books, I would reverse nail the author for overuse of female characters here and for, uhhh… sexism? towards males here.
To sum up – an interesting story, but I think McDermid’s written some better stories.
“Booked for Murder” is yet another story about Lindsay Gordon, a crime-investigating journalist. Her life away from Britain is suddenly interrupted. Her friend, a teen-/YA literature writer Penny has been murdered in a creepy and unconventional method, strangely, a replica of a murder method described in her new book. Problem is, the book’s not only not published yet – it’s still in progress, the manuscripts only seen by a handful of people, one of them being Penny’s partner and another close friend of Lindsay.
Story per se was quite interesting. What I liked less though, that it’s quite difficult to calculate the right suspect until quite late in the book. Not because I like the plots to be predictable but because certain vital information is shared quite late in the book, almost deus ex machina, rather than just the reader getting lost among red herrings.
This book was clearly targeted at LGBT community. Which is great per se, but there is a plainly visible disbalance between the numbers of female and male characters. This disbalance doesn’t feel natural, unless one lives in a social bubble. It’s fashionable to nail Tolkien to a cross for being “sexist” these days (please read shounen before doing so), but, had I not read McDermid’s other books, I would reverse nail the author for overuse of female characters here and for, uhhh… sexism? towards males here.
To sum up – an interesting story, but I think McDermid’s written some better stories.