Rated 4.5 / 5 from 1 log on Katalog
My first Atkinson, woefully out of order. And damn, im both baffled that she had somehow missed me, and thrilled to have so many fantastic books to read ahead. It’s delightful. Everything you want in a Whodunnit, with a wide cast developed so well thst you find yourself thinking—oh, i wonder what X is doing, I wonder where Y was at the time. Moreover, for all that I love Christie and Doyle and such, Atkinson switches viewpoints chapter to chapter, for each of her main cast, and writes them so beautifully that you find yourself thinking — it could just be this, just a funny, wry slice of life set in this (Welsh?) countryside village and I’d enjoy it immensely. Theyre all so unhinged, in a very quiet and British way, all of them both figures of extreme melodrama and genuine personal struggles. It’s fantastic. Two characters in particular, this PTSD riddled veteran and pathologically lonely vicar (who hadn’t so much came to faith but was aggressively afflicted by it, only to lose it entirely very soon after) stole my heart, but the lady of the manor, whose head we inhabit quite a bit, is close, too. Since this is book six of the series featuring this detective—each of them a standalone mystery—I imagine that this is why the detective itself paled a bit in comparison to the vivid cast. Atkinson probably—reasonably—assumed that we are already familiar with him and his background and that he doesn’t need to be so center stage as the rest. Since I came into things blind, I found him fun, yes, but less compelling than the rest of the cast. Once I trek back and read the series from the start lll for sure enjoy this even more.
