2007 mystery, fourth in Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series. A
cut-price rival bakery, a dangerous new drug, a prickly neo-Pagan
conference, Nazi-looted gold…
Lots of apparently separate stuff is going on here, in fact, to
the extent that I found it a little implausible that it eventually
comes together into a single thing with multiple tentacles. (And the
malefactor(s) are only mildly punished, even though they've caused
several deaths.)
I'll admit that I would have expected a competent baker, particularly
one who varies recipes and is willing to try new ideas, to think more
immediately of ergotism as an explanation for a particular sort of
strange behaviour than Corinna does here – and to know where it comes
from.
The material with the characters and the found-family is as solid as
ever. I think there is perhaps a bit too much plot happening all at
once, and the tone wavers uneasily between friendly supportive people
and lingering fallout from the Nazi occupation of Greece (with several
ancient survivors who get a chance to tell their stories).
(I still find it hard to take seriously the idea of celebrating
seasonal ceremonies based on the seasons that are happening in the
opposite hemisphere, e.g. having your spring festival when the land
around you is turning to autumn… but some people are very firm about
it, and that's their religion and not mine.)
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.