Mai
If you're considering this book, do yourself a favor and watch the Miss Marple version of it. The plot's tied up much more neatly, the acting's pretty stellar – Julian Sands is, as in his Room with a View days, like a dream, and Saffron Burrows (Aubrey) is probably just the most beautiful, charming woman I've ever laid eyes on.
Also Alan Davies as the Superintendant just gives such a funny spin to the whole macabre episode
The premise was promising but the book trudges on soooooo tediouslyyyy. Terrible character tropes, cliched plot lines, ridiculous and predictable twists, and the only slightly interesting character is —ehem (don't know how to hide specific spoilers on the phone so sorry!!!) — killed off completely unnecessarily. Oh here's a villainous female character; let her stab the female cop with a breakfast knife just because. Anyway, I'm sick to the core by curmudgeonly old male detective characters yelling at others. Build them up well enough the way Raymond Chandler did to Marlowe and they might be bearable. This Laszlo has enough soul to fill less than half of an episode of Black Mirror, and that's only because I keep having to imagine him as an older version of Mathew McConaughey to get through the book.
Edit: Aside from all my gripes with the story itself and how tiring its people are, I do enjoy the final back-and-forths about the nature of reality and truth. Increasing the rating to 3 stars for that.
