Tag Archives: Mystery

July 12, 2026 · 3:37 pm

The Drowned: Skip it

Sean O’Brien won the Booker and now any book you pick up of his is like “this guy won the Booker,” and so you think you’re going to be getting an absolute gem. And sure, The Drowned was well written in that its atmospheric and well paced and writing that is good enough not to be noticed, but also it was about too many things and with characters that (I guess because it’s part of a series?) have too little and too much character development going on.

Ostensibly about the disappearance of a woman, Dee, under suspicious circumstances – the husband Armitage reports her as having ‘run off’ the book is more about the relationship between Stafford, the detective, and the others in his life (girlfriend, boss, partner) but without knowing Stafford from other books I was a little lost for why I ought to care about him.

And also a little unsure about the Irish politics (like the Catholics are bad?) and the time period – when are we? Why is everyone smoking so much?

Anyway, all this to say I wouldn’t throw it out a train window, but I also wouldn’t seek it out, and will absolutely for sure forget I read it.

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June 29, 2026 · 3:24 pm

Under the Same Stars: Stand Up

I remembered liking Libba Bray from a hundred years ago when I read Going Bovine but on reading that review it turns out that book was just “okay,” and so is Under the Same Stars: just okay.

In this case a three-part time frame set around the same loosely connected family and a quasi-mystery. The mystery: two girls disappear in a German forest during WWII presumed dead. The loosely connected family are the girls and the generations that follow – connected in some cases by family but more through place.

It is mostly a book that repeatedly and excessively emphasizes its theme (it all but quotes the poem ‘first they came for the X and I did nothing) that against moral outrage we have responsibilities to stand up and resist. And while the current political moment is not named, the book makes very clear the repeated instances of authoritarian violence and the obligation for people of good conscience to do more than passively observe.

This morning L. was telling me how her friends play a game where one child is excluded by the rest – the excluded game – and she was trying to explain that she wasn’t doing anything because she was just walking around with them. And while rushing out the door to camp was not the moment to get into bystanders and the immorality of inaction, I did strike me then, as it did when I was reading the book, how obvious it is that we should each act in the face of injustice and how difficult it seems to be to exercise that kind of agency and courage when the appeal of just walking around is so tempting.

Anyway, it’s not a very good book in that the characters are not that rich, the plot not all that surprising (you can call the outcome to the mystery pretty early on) and the theme so transparently aggressive that one does want to scream a bit (though reminding myself it is YA I’ll try to be more generous).

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February 18, 2026 · 2:23 pm

When Will There Be Good News? (That’s the book title, but also)

Did I choose Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News for its title? Maybe. Because don’t we all want to know? When. Will. There. Be. Good. News.

Until that day we can read charming mysteries with well drawn characters and (what’s the opposite of graphic?) engrossing plots. Jackson Brodie is a decent detective, but I prefer his counterpart (and why isn’t she the #main detective?) Louise because she takes no shit and has seen some things.

Anyway it’s a mystery that is also literary fiction, or maybe literary fiction that is also a mystery? In this instance I kept waiting for the ‘gross murder’ to happen because that’s how mysteries have trained me, and there was some of that, but not really – more about suspense and secrets and building of connections and how does it all fit together. All while being well written! What a win.

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December 26, 2025 · 9:28 pm

The Black Wolf: I hate to say a bad word about Louise Penny, but.

I usually just say I love Louise Penny for the comforting and cute the Gamache mysteries. But I have to say The Black Wolf is pretty bad. Ack, it feels like such a betrayal to say so. But it is – a plot that doesn’t really hang together and/or is so hard to follow that you can’t be bothered, characters that are so underdeveloped they have to continually be reintroduced as ‘the one who Gamache is responsible for ruining’ or ‘the one who Gamache hates because he ruined his son’ etc, and an effort at being Relevant so ham-fisted and obvious (the Americans are coming for Canada) that you just can’t stop being annoyed the whole time you’re reading it. Like really – nothing much in this book that I’d recommend – it’s even short on the usually fantastic descriptions of casseroles and croissants.

I know you’ll probably read it – if the waiting list at the library or the tables inside Chapters are any indication – because there’s something about a familiar and comforting series that is hard to resist, but if I were you (and what am I doing here if not giving you unsolicited book reading advice) I’d absolutely skip it in favour of just about anything else.

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