Art Lover

New and different and truly enjoyable.

Revisado: 04-22-23

i really enjoyed this book and wish there were more featuring this same detective. A fresh look at the traditional English mystery from the perspective of a man with a non-English ethnic background but a decidedly English upbringing. A believable and interesting cast of characters that were portrayed realistically without resorting to excessive and unrealistic action scenes. Emphasis was on the mystery, not the danger encountered by the detective, as so many poorly written books tend to do. Yet not overly convoluted to the point that you cannot follow the story very well, as so many other weak writers tend to do.

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No Isles, More luck than good detective work

Revisado: 03-12-23

I read this book after having read later books in the Rizzoli and Isles series. From my perspective, this first entry in the series reflects an inexperienced author who could not make up her mind between telling a horror story and telling a mystery story. I was particularly frustrated that Dr. Isles did not appear at all, and Detective Rizzoli was only one of three protagonists, each of whose story could easily have led to their own series. Moreover, Detective Rizzoli is depicted as a rather resentful, frustrated woman who bears a lot of grudges and acts in a decidedly non-professional manner at times.

In the end, although Detective Rizzoli finds the criminal and stops him, it is more a matter of luck than of good detective work. Yes, she picks up on clues that others have ignored, and yes, she follows up on things that others have not, but the final run-down of the criminal involves a lucky guess. Everyone in the story seems to fail to connect the dots - dots that I connected about halfway through the book. (I won't disclose any more here, so new readers can judge for themselves.) I found the descriptions of the murders and tortures to be long on gore and I saw no need to do that. Was she trying to compete with Steven King? There was, indeed, a clever plot and a clever and frightening antagonist, but by having different people find out different facts diminished Rizzoli's contribution. It was not at all clear who the protagonist actually was. At times, Rizzoli's part of the story seemed more about a woman's frustration working in a profession populated mainly by men, rather than a highly competent woman detective solving the mystery. i was also frustrated at how Rizzoli failed to call for backup, when she should have near the end, and was only saved by a rather hard-to-believe action by one of her male colleagues. Had it not been for that stroke of luck, there might have been three dead bodies in that basement, at the end.

Fortunately, the later books in the series show a greatly improved writing style and a more likeable Jane Rizzoli.

The narrator could use some lessons on proper pronunciation of some medical terms and surnames.

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Clever new twist on Holmes

Revisado: 11-17-22

A protagonist who runs a Sherlock Holmes bookshop but doesn't particularly show much interest in Holmes, and fails to realize that her manners and methods are amazingly like those of Holmes.

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Clever Ending

Revisado: 06-03-22

i enjoy this series, even though I've never kmown a cat as appealing as Charles, the library cat in these stories. There were a lot of red herring suspects in this episod, and a surprising villain.

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Convoluted

Revisado: 05-04-22

it started off well and i thoight it was going to be a very good mystery with an appealing heroine. Toward the end it got confusing and convoluted, with the solution depending on confessions by people who lied instead of determining the solution through evidence.

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Amateurish Romance Novel

Revisado: 04-22-22

I'm not sure how this got into my library, as I normally stay far away from romance novels. This book reminded me of why. The plot was incredibly thin and half the book consisted of passionate lovemaking scenes between two people whose criteria for partners seemed mostly to consist of sexual attraction and prowess. This was the first Audible book I've hoped would end sooner than it did.

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Provocative - good people blinded by prejudice

Revisado: 04-15-22

This is basically a love story or even might be considered a romance novel. But the real power of the story, to me, was how effectively it showed the negative effects of cultural and religious bias on good, well-meaning people. A young girl of German, Jewish heritage escapes Auschwitz by a twist of fate. She then spends parts of her life in a Catholic, Polish family and, later, in a Protestant, South African family. Throughout the story, cultural and religious biases for and against <take your pick: Jews, Germans, Polish, Catholics, Protestants, South Africans, and a few others> force the girl to hide part of her background and heritage to protect herself. She must pretend to be German, Polish, or South African at different times, always hiding her Jewish roots. The biases of her various adoptive families are sometimes overly positive ("Germans are too civilized to have participated in the holocaust") but are more often overly negative. The girl herself turns out to be highly resourceful, and the families she lives with are all quite benevolent. But she can never be totally honest and forthright, and at times this proves to be very difficult for her. For example, in one scene a holocaust denier brings back memories of her relatives who were, in fact, victims of the holocaust, but she doesn't dare bring up this fact.
The girl herself and the boy she befriends are a little too perfect to be real, but looking at the world from the girl's perspective is a most interesting way to see the effects of our human tendency to buy in to cultural and religious biases.

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interesting characters but a long time before any

Revisado: 12-26-21

It took more than half of the book to be introduced to this complex array of characters. It's still impossible to identify a protagonist. Perhaps the entire family has that role. It all eventually comes together in a satisfying but somewhat predictable way. Here's a hint -- who is the mysterious "American movie star?"

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Good, especially if you know Baltimore

Revisado: 12-12-21

This story is rather convoluted and in many ways improbable, but the characters are interesting and the details about Baltimore are insightful.

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Interesting characters but a bit of a stretch

Revisado: 12-07-21

We never get an explanation for some of the spooky elements ant some of it stretches credulity. Bit there is an interesting cast of characters. I suspect some questions will only be answered in subsequent books in this series.

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