Reviews for A happy English child

The average rating for A happy English child based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-12-31 00:00:00 Hubertus Peter BOOK 155 - Mid-20th Century North American Crime Readathon - Round 6 "Good Night, Good Night" is the story reviewed here. HOOK - 3 stars: "Pain", a single word is the opening sentance/paragraph. Okay, I'll go with that, I'm curious. PACE - 3 stars: For a short, just right. PLOT - 4: Four acquaintances of Don Denton, TV show host, have a key to his apartment. The all hate him. One of them unlocks his front door, shot him, then left. A nice twist adds a fourth star to the plot. CHARACTERS - 4: Don Denton likes to head home after his show's taping for the day and watch himself, alone, every night. Nancy, Don's wife, wants a divorce. Herb Martin, show writer, is a blacklisted communist and Don has threatened to fire him. Morey Stoneman, Don's business manager, books bad acts for a kickback. Don knows it and expects kickbacks. Eddie Blake is Don's sidekick on the show but Eddie wants the starring role. Four people, 4 keys, 4 motives to get rid of Don. Good cast, and motivations for all is clear. ATMOSPHERE - 2: Almost nothing. Don does have a chair at home with a built-in swivel top for writing and even drawers for filing, that's interesting: Don has a massive ego and he enjoys looking at himself on the television, take notes about himself, and file away his greatness. But we get nothing about the inner workings of the show itself, so it's a miss for me. SUMMARY - 3.2, a good short from the author. "God Save the Mark" - 1967 - 3.0 "Never Shake a Family Tree" - 1961 - 3.6 "Journey to Death" - 1959 - 3.4 "Good Night, Good Night" - 1960 - 3.2 Donald E. Westlake average rating - 3.30

Review # 2 was written on 2012-02-02 00:00:00 charles dye This is a decent if unexceptional collection. Most of the stories tend to the humorous, which Westlake is good at, and indeed they tend to be amusing, albeit generally not riotous. There are a few more serious ones, and a bit of SF, but they are as a rule all fairly formulaic. I had read several before in different collections, so my sense of their predictability may be based in that familiarity as much as inherent, but then, there were also several I hadn't read before, which seemed no less easy to predict. So, you, know, entertaining, but hardly a game-changer for the genre. Plus, it's pretty poorly edited; I couldn't believe how many typos I tripped over.