Thursday, May 10, 2007

Inspector Lynley -- not!

What Came Before He Shot Her by Elizabeth George: I love Elizabeth George and the premise of this book is interesting -- it's the story of the life of a boy, Joel, who killed a character in an earlier book, up to the point where he commits the murder. The problem is it's boring! This is my second major mystery writer to disappoint me in as many months; I was also not fond of P. D. James' The Murder Room. Elizabeth George is capable of telling a compelling story -- of getting the reader interested in the characters. Why oh why didn't she do that here? Because she is more interested in the social problems brought up in the book (poverty, racism, lack of parental skills, overburdened schools, autism, drugs, AIDS) than she is in the story -- that's why. If she'd displayed as much interest in telling the tale as she does in discussing societal issues, What Came Before He Shot Her could have been a powerful book instead of one that just falls flat.

In my last post I mentioned needing alone time. In Dean Koontz's Brother Odd, the main character goes to a monastery to spend some time in reflection. There is a convent just down the street from me that allows lay people to do this. I'm thinking about looking into their program; I need to get away from the distractions in my life at least for a short time.

6 comments:

nutmeg said...

Oh, I've needed a lot of "alone time" this past week and half Katya! Sorry to be a bit absent but I just had to finish The Lost. A huge investment of time but once I got into it I really got caught up in the story of his relatives and the stories of the people he interviewed. But like you said - amazingly long sentences and those sections on parts of Genesis and how they related to his search "lost" me a bit and I ended up skimming over those. But all in all I really got a lot out of reading it.

I've seen the Koontz book you mentioned about the place - are you enjoying it?

Kathy said...

I liked it -- Koontz is always a quick read for me and the Odd Thomas books are the quickest of the bunch. Brother Odd was my favorite of that series.

sari said...

"The problem is it's boring!"

This made me laugh out loud!

Kathy said...

sari: I hate boring. And I still have about 50 pages left to go on the book! It's the neverending book!

BabelBabe said...

I totally skimmed the last half of the book. Had to know what happened, didn't want to slog thru. (I may have already told you this...)

Kathy said...

GOD! BB, it was SO boring. Unfortunately, I don't skim well or I would have done it with this book!