John Kelly

The author has a beautiful way with words and at some points, the language was so wonderfully modern, all wry and sardonic and self-aware. But the plotting was awful, with a dozen or so characters not so much introduced but rather vomited onto the page over a couple of paragraphs so I spent half the book going “now which one is this?” For example, there are two characters, a Mr and a Mrs Wilde, and yet while the two are in conversation, the author would refer to one of them as “Wilde”, as in “”Wilde said...”.

This was my first Inspector Alleyn book, but based on this outing, I don't know if I'll make the effort with the rest.

This has been on my “currently reading” list since December 2012. I've given up and restarted it on and off since then. It was such a struggle to get through. I think the problem is that it irritates the same parts of my brain as The Big Bang Theory - it's supposed to appeal to nerds like me, but it's such a shitshow that I find myself getting annoyed. In place of any character development or story, we're treated to a never-ending string of “like that thing in $nerd_reference”. Right up until the last chapter. “It was a hedge maze. With the same layout as the one in Labyrinth”. This is cheap, lazy writing at its worst. Dan Brown, all is forgiven.