Monday, February 28, 2005
An Excellent Mystery?
How often does a book include its own review in the title? I can think of Philip Roth's The Great American Novel, and few others. So Ellis Peters sets up some high expectations when she calls one of the Brother Cadfael books An Excellent Mystery.
She does, in fact, violate some well-established rules, although they are the rules of her own books. For example, there is no suspect who is the more suitable but less favored suitor of the woman at the center, as there is in well more than half of the other books.
Unfortunately, the subterfuge is for naught, since I realized well before the deductive monk what had happened to the girl (supposed murdered, since she disappeared three years earlier, around the same time that the mysteriously mute and delicate monk showed up).
Well, I never read these books for the mysteries. I like the settings, I like Cadfael himself and the readers (I actually listen to the books), and I enjoy the details of life in a medieval cloister that reverberates with the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. All that is in place, and if the mystery is no mystery, that is no suprise. But is isn't exactly excellent, either.
dmh
She does, in fact, violate some well-established rules, although they are the rules of her own books. For example, there is no suspect who is the more suitable but less favored suitor of the woman at the center, as there is in well more than half of the other books.
Unfortunately, the subterfuge is for naught, since I realized well before the deductive monk what had happened to the girl (supposed murdered, since she disappeared three years earlier, around the same time that the mysteriously mute and delicate monk showed up).
Well, I never read these books for the mysteries. I like the settings, I like Cadfael himself and the readers (I actually listen to the books), and I enjoy the details of life in a medieval cloister that reverberates with the civil war between Stephen and Matilda. All that is in place, and if the mystery is no mystery, that is no suprise. But is isn't exactly excellent, either.
dmh
