2007-03-10 Excellent plot but what a tedious read...

This is the second Minette Walters novel I have read, the other being The Shape of Snakes, and I got as little pleasure from this one as I did the first. Good points first: brilliant plotting, and, at one level, a gifted mind at work and a fast pace of action. The book held my attention sufficiently for me to finish the story to discover the perpetrator. But oh dear, the disappointment and tedium of the style and presentation...

I like to get right into the feelings, personalities and subconscious of the main players. I like to get to know the police officers, and victim's family (where applicable) and be able to see and feel what is happening from the chief protagonist's viewpoint. My usual feeling on reading a P D James or Ruth Rendell offering is huge admiration - and sadness at having to say 'goodbye' to characters whom I have got to know so well. I didn't feel I knew any of these 'people' who came over more as literary marionettes whom the author manipulated with admittedly consummate skill. Even worse, I did not care a fig for the described suffering of the players, and couldn't empathise with the 2 chief characters at any level.

I finished the book out of curiosity re the plot's culmination - and there were no farewells to be said. In fact I did not feel that the personalities had been portrayed convincingly enough for us even to have been introduced.

The chapters and sub-sections are in the main fairly short and there is minimum description of environment and character. Most of the individuals are hugely dysfunctional and the language almost universally overstrong for my taste. I think the main male character and the police officers (at least when interviewing suspects) were the only ones not to use frequent expletives as part of their everyday conversation.

In particular, I missed the setting within a timeframe and location with which I could felt an empathy. I sorely missed the great swathes of brilliantly and beautifully written narrative and character description one gets so bountifully from P D James; and the 'surreally' realistic character and atmosphere evocation typical of Ruth Rendell. I put the book down feeling thoroughly depressed and miserable, and I am unlikely to read another minette Walters novel.