Reviews for The Stadium Murder

The average rating for The Stadium Murder based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-09-06 00:00:00 Linda Derose I loved this book. I've read many of the reviews, and while I agree with some of the criticisms (more on that later) I was so thoroughly caught up in this murder mystery set in the pre-Dickensian era that I have to put it on my list of favorites. The atmosphere, the details, the environment was richly rendered, the characters were fully fleshed and three-dimensional, and the mystery was intriguing, properly grisly, intricate and always compelling. It is about a schoolteacher named Thomas Shield who gets caught up in the private lives of two of his students, one of whom is the young Edgar Allan Poe. Neither one of the boys plays a huge personal role in the drama (Taylor has been criticized for calling his book "the American boy" when it is not actually about Poe per se) but their extended families are front and center, enmeshed in a web of greed, love, and lust for power. Thomas finds himself a pawn in the hands of powerful people and has to fight to resolve the mystery in order to save himself from doom. Some people have said that Thomas Shield is not a wholly sympathetic character (I've noticed before this that Andrew Taylor tends to portray his male characters warts and all) but he's certainly sympathetic enough, and working my way through the mystery in his intelligent and perceptive hands felt very comfortable for me. Maybe he's not the most emotive of men, but I could imagine myself spending a very enjoyable afternoon talking with him, and what more can you want from a narrator? Another complaint is be that the book is too slow and psychological in places. For instance, when they first go to the country there is a long section where relationships are being worked out almost in the manner of Jane Austen. Conversations are had, discoveries are made, links are forged day by day, and some readers found this tiring. I personally loved it, because I knew it was all working toward the setting up of whatever terrible thing was to come, and I found the character development fascinating in itself. So I give it an enthusiastic thumbs-up. And for those who like to really experience the feel of a different time and place, I say this was one of the best. The atmosphere of both London and the country was so well rendered that I felt I was experiencing firsthand the stink of the factories, the bustle and clang of the street traffic, the gray miasma of coal-infused fog, the frigidity of the "great estate" parlors, the jouncing of carriages over hard country ruts. When I finished I really felt I had come back from a journey to the past.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-01 00:00:00 J Daniels Meh. I found the first half intriguing enough, but the second half bored me. I found it hard to stay connected to the plot and the characters. The more intricate the plot got, the less interested I became. I was tempted to abandon this book, but I'd already invested so much time in it. I don't know why I do this to myself, but I forced myself to finish it. The only reason I gave it three stars instead of two was because historical fiction requires a considerable degree of competence on the part of the writer, and I felt that he had earned it. That said, I won't be looking for anything else written by Andrew Taylor.