Reviews for The U.P. Trail

The average rating for The U.P. Trail based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-23 00:00:00 Angela Donalson An enjoyable, if not a great one, this book suffers from an identity crisis. Is it a light novel of fluffy English manners, or is it a mystery? By trying to be both, it gets its signals crossed and neither aspect is done as well as it could be. I've enjoyed Mortimer's Rumpole on TV, and very much liked his memoir, Voyage Round my Father. This falls short of those, but it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-19 00:00:00 Ken Maliga Story about Molly Pargeter - a mother of three who decides to rent a Tuscan Villa for her family's Summer holiday (the party against her will including her lecherous 70 something father who writes a column for a famous old left leaning magazine). Molly becomes intrigued by the lives of the Ketterings from whom she rents the villa mainly due to an intriguing note she finds - and believes there is some mystery involving them. Initially she thinks her family is being asked to pretend to be the Ketterings (an idea inspired by a Sherlock Holmes story as well as the house advert which seemed very specific that the villa suited a family with three girls) then that it is some fraud to do with water shortages and then supsects an affair between Mrs Kettering and the local Signor Fixit (an Englishman who helps out the ex-pats with all their needs). The book is set among the Chianti-set as well as a group of rich kids who spend their holidays travelling from one European villa to another. I found these characters impossible to identify or sympathise with, the book very uninvolving with no seeming themes or deeper meanings and even the mystery being resolved in a fairly uninteresting as well as unsatisfactory way. More of a "who cares" than a "whodunit".