Tuesday, 28 April 2020

Ann Granger - Mud, Muck and Dead Things


Rating: 3/5

Review:
Undemanding

This was a decent, undemanding cosy crime novel until the ending, which I’m afraid I found very silly indeed.

The plot concerns the death of a young woman in the Cotswolds, investigated by Inspector Jess Campbell and her new boss Superintendent Ian Carter, whose partnership is new and scarcely develops during this first book. The investigation involves an array of local characters who are reasonably well portrayed if a little on the predictable side – the rich and boorish incomer, the horsy, bossy mother and so on. It all develops a little slowly but readably...until an utterly absurd development toward the end which made me say “Oh, please!” out loud and rather lost me from there on in.

Ann Granger’s prose is good, although her characters do tend to talk in novelistic paragraphs rather than as natural speech, and for most of the book I thought I’d be rounding 3.5 stars up to 4. However, the last 50 pages or so changed my mind. I can give this a cautious and qualified recommendation as a light, undemanding read, but it does come with reservations.

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