Rating: 2/5
Review:
Not for me
I didn't get on well with this book, I'm afraid. It's the first Kasasian I have read and may
well be the last.
Set in 1939, Sgt. Betty Church has lost half her left arm
and is promoted to inspector and sent to
her home town in Suffolk to get her
out of the way. Suffolk
has never admitted female police officers so…well, you can probably guess the
welcome she receives. There is a lot of
local "colour" and lots of improbable murders happen, but I never had
the sense of any sort of developing, involving story.
Part of the problem is that although Betty is a fairly
engaging narrator and her feminism and toughness are fine qualities, the other
characters are a parade of annoyingly pantomimic stereotypes: the unspeakably
sexist, vulgar, incompetent, drunken, halitosis-ridden fellow-inspector, for
example, or Dido, who combines all the worst aspects of Madeleine Bassett and
Violet Elizabeth Bott, but without the brilliant comedic touch of either. She became unreadably annoying very quickly –
which is a real problem in an almost incessant presence. This,
coupled with the sense of just wading through descriptions with little
narrative drive, meant that The Suffolk Vampire became a chore for me. I stuck it out for about half the book, but
couldn't face 400-odd pages of this stuff and skimmed most of the rest.
Plainly, Kasasian's books have been popular, but this really
wasn't for me. It's decently written,
but I found it tedious and unfunny and can't recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment