Comments | oddmonster: "Good grief," I said.

oddmonster

"Good grief," I said.

Nov 19, 2010 16:45

#91: Lavender Lies by Susan Wittig Albert:We settled ourselves in the wicker chairs, and I glanced around. The porch might have been a set for a 1930s movie, with an old oak icebox standing against one wall and a bench with a white enameled bucket and wash basin on the other, an embroidered hopsacking towel hanging above it. The painted floor was ( Read more... )

books, 2010: rock the library, mysteries, culinary mystery

Comments 6

rileyc November 19 2010, 22:23:43 UTC

Oh! Thanks for this review. I've had the very first one in the series, Thyme of Death, sitting around here forever, but I keep debating whether or not to take the plunge with it.

oddmonster November 19 2010, 22:48:02 UTC

Ooh! I'd love to hear what you think of it! Because I have a giant ticklespot for stories about small towns where the town's a character, this series rocks out for me. Also, China and MacQuaid make a great couple, imo.

bounce!

Digression regisjean November 21 2010, 09:51:31 UTC

May I use this line of yours : «At one point, she pauses after Bayles has just found body #2 to do a one-page digression on Texas geology. Which is fabulous» as a side lane to give escape to my self-indulging taste for digressions?

One thing I found truly tasty, when reading Melville's «Moby Dick», was his fabulous capacity to digressions. A writer able to open entire whole chapters dedicated to digressions. Like, eg., such a one about 'Free fishes and tied fishes'. Never flinching, nevertheless, off the main line of his dramatic route. I don't know why, I got an impression of freedom, as a reader, regarding the 'landscape of imagination' displayed, for being enabled by the author himself to play hooky. Not being in bondage of a straight iron collar of a plot, if I may say.

Warning: true life tragedy deiseach November 21 2010, 17:49:06 UTC

Definitely not the way you handle a custodial kidnapping.

Back in 2001, in the next county (County Tipperary) a man shot his six year old daughter and then himself. He did this because he'd been on the run for two years since collecting his daughter on an arranged visit from her mother, his separated wife, and going on the run.

The police had tracked him down and went to question him. No more than ten minutes later, while they had left to make further enquiries, he killed his child and himself.

So - big town meeting about kidnapped child? No, China. No. More than a slap needed here.

Re: Warning: true life tragedy oddmonster November 21 2010, 17:59:01 UTC

Thank you. Exactly. I started reading that section, and I got a little uneasy at the start, because that's a hard thing to write about and not screw up, and lo and behold, I feel it got handled incredibly poorly in this book. I do wonder, in fact, about what type of research Albert did before deciding to incorporate that plotline, because that's just not a topic you can slap in a book without thinking. Argh.

The story you mention is tragic and horrible and pretty much exactly the type of thing I expected to happen when China started running her mouth. Double argh.

Re: Warning: true life tragedy deiseach November 21 2010, 22:18:25 UTC

"I do wonder, in fact, about what type of research Albert did before deciding to incorporate that plotline, because that's just not a topic you can slap in a book without thinking."

Pretty much, yeah.

Best result? Guy grabs kid and heads off into the wild blue yonder, and mom has the whole tracking him down to do again from scratch.

Worst result? Well, we know what that is.