Reviews for Death comes staccato

The average rating for Death comes staccato based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-06-05 00:00:00 John Steffanci Slovo was definitely one of the 80s-90s Women's Press/Virago detective writers who could actually write. This was neatly plotted and smoothly written, and I enjoyed the way she wrote overtly for female audiences, with relationships described in ways that rarely fit into crime novels or men's novels. For instance, the way Kate and her assistant Carmen have a fight based on Kate's inherent racism and Carmen's disappointment in the way it was dealt with. In the same vein, though, this did still suffer from the aforementioned 80s-90s Women's Press/Virago detective writers' trope problems, namely that many of the leads and plot developments happen purely because our heroines are women and either a) people talk to them where they wouldn't trust a man, or b) they think to talk to people men wouldn't think to talk to. It's a little lazy, but this is still far superior to many of these tart noir-style novels.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-01-05 00:00:00 David Coupe I read the whole series when they were originally published in the 1980s. I enjoyed them then and I enjoyed rereading this one, which I found in a charity shop. There were several female detective stories around then including Val Mcdermid's two series, one featuring Lindsay Gordon I think she was called and another one with a P.I. called Kate. Everything now seems to be based on police stories Including on TV. Perhaps because so many thrillers are now preoccupied with murder as this story was then but private investigators would be involved with a wider variety of cases. But I enjoyed revisiting the 1980s and will look out for any more in this series which I suspect is now out of print.