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Jul. 31st, 2010 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaLAST NOCTURNE, by Marjorie Eccles.
Cover copy: What could make a successful, happily married man take a gun and shoot himself? What made a young artist on the brink of fame throw himself to his death?
These are the questions facing Chief Inspector Lamb and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Cogan. Neither victim left a note behind to explain what drove him to take his own life, and it appears that nothing untoward had occurred in the weeks preceding their deaths. Having briefly met both victims, Lamb struggles to connect the impression he gained of the men with their final actions, and his close attention pays off when a postmortem reveals some surprising results.
With one case now looking like a suspicious death, Lamb looks for links between the two men. All paths seem to lead to the enigmatic figure of Mrs Isobel Amberley and a mysterious event that took place one winter's night in Vienna.
Beautifully written and highly evocative of the bustling streets of London and Vienna in the early twentieth century, LAST NOCTURNE is an intriguingly complex mystery of passion and the devastating repercussions of a single action.
Gender of detective: male
For the first 80 pages or so of this book, you're left wondering if you're absolutely sure you're in the right novel. There's been one apparent suicide (the gunshot death), but mostly the narrative is focused on his widow, and the daughter of an old friend of hers who dumps her jerk of a fiance to come be the widow's social secretary, and how that's working out for her. Then comes the second seeming suicide, and we start getting flashbacks to Isobel Amberley's past, and the mystery as such starts.
Seriously. 80 pages. Out of a three-hundred-something page book, that's not as much as it could be, but still a significant chunk. And especially when you know there's something more coming, when you know there are links that haven't been drawn yet, it creates the impression that the book is lolly-gagging.
That's the thing: despite the deaths, despite the murders, this comes across as more of a historical novel with romance and mystery elements. It tries - indeed, near the end it seems to finally remember that it is a mystery, and behaves as such. But Isabel's backstory, for all it's necessary to explain the motive behind the murders, is far more concentrated on nothing more murderous than Austrian politics just prior to the second World War (which is admittedly more murderous than some). It's a good book, but I wouldn't go into it expecting a traditional mystery.
*
Mariposa has finally reconciled herself to the idea that sitting and mewing plaintively at her won't get her anything but either mewed back at, or lifted in the air as kitty weights. She's curled up next to me, watching my fingers on the keyboard as if at any minute they might come over and pet her, while Stef and I discuss Stef's next post.
Cover copy: What could make a successful, happily married man take a gun and shoot himself? What made a young artist on the brink of fame throw himself to his death?
These are the questions facing Chief Inspector Lamb and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Cogan. Neither victim left a note behind to explain what drove him to take his own life, and it appears that nothing untoward had occurred in the weeks preceding their deaths. Having briefly met both victims, Lamb struggles to connect the impression he gained of the men with their final actions, and his close attention pays off when a postmortem reveals some surprising results.
With one case now looking like a suspicious death, Lamb looks for links between the two men. All paths seem to lead to the enigmatic figure of Mrs Isobel Amberley and a mysterious event that took place one winter's night in Vienna.
Beautifully written and highly evocative of the bustling streets of London and Vienna in the early twentieth century, LAST NOCTURNE is an intriguingly complex mystery of passion and the devastating repercussions of a single action.
Gender of detective: male
For the first 80 pages or so of this book, you're left wondering if you're absolutely sure you're in the right novel. There's been one apparent suicide (the gunshot death), but mostly the narrative is focused on his widow, and the daughter of an old friend of hers who dumps her jerk of a fiance to come be the widow's social secretary, and how that's working out for her. Then comes the second seeming suicide, and we start getting flashbacks to Isobel Amberley's past, and the mystery as such starts.
Seriously. 80 pages. Out of a three-hundred-something page book, that's not as much as it could be, but still a significant chunk. And especially when you know there's something more coming, when you know there are links that haven't been drawn yet, it creates the impression that the book is lolly-gagging.
That's the thing: despite the deaths, despite the murders, this comes across as more of a historical novel with romance and mystery elements. It tries - indeed, near the end it seems to finally remember that it is a mystery, and behaves as such. But Isabel's backstory, for all it's necessary to explain the motive behind the murders, is far more concentrated on nothing more murderous than Austrian politics just prior to the second World War (which is admittedly more murderous than some). It's a good book, but I wouldn't go into it expecting a traditional mystery.
*
Mariposa has finally reconciled herself to the idea that sitting and mewing plaintively at her won't get her anything but either mewed back at, or lifted in the air as kitty weights. She's curled up next to me, watching my fingers on the keyboard as if at any minute they might come over and pet her, while Stef and I discuss Stef's next post.