2023 mystery, first of a series. Marius Quin wrote a successful
detective novel, but he's blocked on his second one; so when an old
girlfriend asks him to join a New Year's Eve party, he goes along…
Naturally, the host will be murdered.
It's set between the wars, and Brown is an English?Welsh writer
who's clearly well-versed in the tropes of the murder mystery story…
but somehow it doesn't quite work for me. I can't pin down any
specific passage, but somehow it always comes over as though every
utterance is accompanied with a knowing wink, a tee-hee we know
better than these silly people don't we.
I think it feels closer to the later American comedic film adaptation
of the original 1920s story, the sort of thing in which Miss Marple
suddenly pulls out a rapier to have a duel with the villain. (Murder
Ahoy, 1964.) Not that there's anything quite like that here, but it
all feels a just a but off, just a bit too much copy of a copy of a
copy that no longer fits into the shape of the thing it's trying to
imitate.
People speak far too freely of their familial shames and traumas. Some
characters are clearly present only for comic relief. This may well be
great for other people, but for me there's no life to it.