Review:
Disappointing
I’m afraid I’m in a minority in not getting on at all well with
Eight Detectives. It’s a very ingenious idea but it’s simply not
very well done.
The premise is well
described in the publisher’s blurb: a professor of mathematics once
worked out the maths of detective stories and wrote some short
stories himself. A young editor is sent to meet the author and
revise them for publication and finds possibly disturbing clues to an
old, unsolved murder.
So far, so enticing.
My problem is that I didn’t find it well enough written to hold my
attention. The stories themselves aren’t very interesting, are
sometimes rather repellent and generally very implausible. The prose
creaks and plods more than a little and the descriptions of present
day events read in a very similar voice to the stories, which doesn’t
help. In addition, the “mathematical rules for a murder mystery”
are things like “There must be at least one victim” or “There
must be at least two suspects” and that the sets of victim, killer,
suspects, and detectives may overlap in different ways. It’s
hardly earth-shaking stuff. I’m afraid I decided that life was too
short for this, gave up around half way and skimmed to the end.
Sadly, I found it just as unrewarding as the rest of what I’d read.
Others have plainly
enjoyed this book very much and have found the puzzle engrossing, but
I was very disappointed in it and can’t recommend it.
(My thanks to
Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.)
No comments:
Post a Comment