The characters that the female sleuth meets are unforgettable. Let me quote from a blurber called Shots:Ĭity of the Dead may be a post-modern take on the private eye novel, or a surreal examination of a disordered imagination, either way it is strangely hypnotic and particularly good on its evocation of the devastated city of New Orleans.’ Sara Gran has played with the form of a detective novel to write a very powerful novel indeed. However, I did not abandon City of the Dead because its major character is in fact a city, the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, an event which shocked the world and not because of the force of the hurricane. And like all the other crime novels I have ever read, (or abandoned) the novel features a world-weary detective, alienated from friends and family, operating in a sleazy environment and possessed of an almost magical acuity when it comes to ‘reading’ people. The denouement, when it comes, is a bit of an afterthought. So much for Three Bags Full.įor most of City of the Dead, however, it wasn’t that I didn’t care, it was that I forgot about who had done the killing and why. When it took me four days to get up to page 99, I realised that I did not care who had killed the shepherd or why, because I was bored. It features a crime in the Irish village of Glennkill, and a flock of sheep led by a ewe called Miss Maple who collectively solve the mystery. This one was said to be ‘priceless’, ‘witty’ and ‘full of philosophical musings and profound observations’. My second attempt at light reading was Three Bags Full, by German author Leonie Swann and translated by Anthea Bell. Can a paedophile earn redemption? Under what circumstances can an avenger be forgiven? Am I the only one who finds this offensive, even if he was a childhood bully? Have I missed an ‘hilarious’ joke here?Ĭity of the Dead OTOH raises very interesting cases for redemption. No fancy ideas about redemption in this novel: without a trace of authorial irony, Mrs B brusquely implies that Edmund clearly deserved to die a horrible death. On page two we are told that nobody is mourning the young local heir to the manor who’s been blown up in the North Sea, because he was a bully.
I am out of step with the entire reading universe, it seems, because IMO, quite apart from its stock characters and ridiculous plot lines, this historical novel of WW2 is overwritten and tasteless. From my shelves I took down the ‘hilarious’, ‘enchanting’, ‘uplifting’ and ‘profoundly moving’ The Chilbury Ladies Choir by Jennifer Ryan but abandoned it after the requisite 50 pages. I have read some rather grim books lately, and I wanted to read something more light-hearted. City of the Dead is a book that made me think about all sorts of things, but I shall try not to make this review into a rant.
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