Reviews for A compelling case

The average rating for A compelling case based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-04-30 00:00:00 John Smith Reviewed for Books and livres I borrowed this at my library because no reader borrowed it and I wanted to find out why - at first sight, it looked rather good ? This was book #6 in a series, but often time, you don't need to have read the rest to understand the story. Now, I know. It's dull, the characters are horrible and I simply couldn't finish it. I tried ! It starts in a way that made me think about the Victorian period with industries surrounding an old upper class estate, the upper class feeling superior comparing to the middle class, yet the middle class gaining more money than them and gaining entry into their society while they despise them. Then followed too numerous pages with a gathering of pedantic parasites who played intellectual games without doing much of their lives. They bickered, they were all insufferable, you could see the plot coming from very far away - no orignality. I thought maybe when the murder was committed, it would be better ? Nope. Same, you see it coming from far away. I tried to keep up until the middle of the book and then, finally, I gave up ! Some books and authors are forgotten, but there's a reason why.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-04-04 00:00:00 Ian Fridy The Golden Age crime writers were an erudite lot and usually pretty unafraid to wear that erudition on their sleeves. Innes/ Stewart was probably the most guilty of this - able to write genuine classics of the genre but sometimes just a little too pleased by how clever he obviously was and more than happy to show it When this works well, you get Appleby's End which is this totally unique, heady stew of a book - knotty, florid prose jostling up against a brilliantly gothic setting and a bunch of unique ideas. And when it doesn't it's this, which relies on knowing minutiae of English literature for no real reason other than showing off. Innes dangles an interesting plot at us, but swiftly the whole thing dissipates into unfocused prose (which he tries to hide behind the narrator being a literary author) and muddled writing And basically if any novel deserves to be a short story it's this one. It literally turns into a rip off of two far more famous and better novels by the second half. The first one is The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley, but in this case replayed simply as showing off/ padding. The second is literally one of the most famous Golden Age crime novels ever written and I won't give the title because it will give away the whole sorry plot to this thing in an instant. And just me not telling you that title almost certainly means you have guessed it and as such I have freed you from this disappointment Only Appleby himself acquits himself well but really that's not enough. Maddening