Rating: 4/5
Review:
Good setting, slightly stodgy storytelling
I enjoyed Sympathy For The Devil overall, but I did have
some reservations about it.
This is the fourth in the Breen & Tozer series. I hadn't read any of the previous books, but
this is fine as a stand-alone novel. Set
in London in 1969, Detective
Sergeant Cathal Breen is called to investigate the murder of a prostitute with
an exclusive clientele. Things become
convoluted and murky as it becomes clear that people with influence are impeding
the investigation. The plot unravels
fairly convincingly, with blind alleys, the possibility of espionage and the
eventual discovery of the killer with a slightly more plausible denouement than
we often get in this sort of story.
It's a pretty well-told tale. I did find it a little plodding and stolid at
times, but the characters seemed real to me and the period was well
evoked. I think William Shaw has done a
good job in portraying the attitudes of the time; he manages to strike that
difficult balance of showing how many people thought and spoke then, while not
making the book intolerably offensive to modern readers. For example, there are just a couple of uses
of what would now be thought of as pretty shockingly racist terms but which are
exactly the sort of words used casually by many people in 1969. It's enough to be realistic and makes the
point but doesn't labour it. The same
applies to some of the sexist views and attitudes to "unmarried
mothers" – which was often a term of severe disapproval then.
This is a decent read without being a brilliant one, I
think. The setting is a good deal better
than many "period" crime novels and it's well worth a go to see
whether you like it, but be prepared for some slightly stodgy periods. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.
(I received and ARC via Netgalley.)
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