Reviews for A studied death

The average rating for A studied death based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-29 00:00:00 Scott Kelly Gail Bowen's fifth Saskatchewan novel, "A Killing Spring", is everyone's least favourite. There are great motives, decades-old history no one could surmise but Gail struck up too many bands. Race, Down Syndrome, homelessness, abuse, tough Dads, and girls feeling ugly all marched by. I might have raised my feedback if I had not read this 1996 mystery during today's "Me Too Movement". Joanne Kilbourne is as puzzled as everyone else, when a pupil accuses a likeable boy of leaving a lewd message in her library book. Fed up about being disbelieved, she runs off and Joanne's last contact is a drunken phone call. She disappears and a revered professor is murdered in a sleazy apartment. He had recently married an unpopular acquaintance of Joanne's, who consoles her and helps sort it out. Her proximity to mystery cases felt natural, without dating an officer. Drama over his Aboriginal culture being "too tricky" was odd and felt like Gail was adding to a hot topic roster. Isolation was pervasive. Joanne couldn't stand her best friend's boyfriend, an unlikeable professor and got dropped from the political show Jill produced. We know he is a bad apple but the intrigue is Reed's murder location and their missing pupil. Was she a better journalist pupil than it seemed? My two thumbs-down are these. Are you tired of tacky endings, when a protagonist falls into harm's way, despite being surrounded by assistance? It disturbed the coup of simply making the triumphant arrest. Lastly, most of Gail's books comprise a trip to someone's hometown. Then she discovers she neglected evidence in her pocket, while readers are yelling: "Check the cassette"!!!! I would have graded this higher, if I hadn't recognized Gail's formulas and sighed, "You went that route again"? I'm pleased Hilda returns in the next novel.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-06-15 00:00:00 Samson Nano A good Canadian mystery series set in Regina. Reed Gallagher, the head of the School of Journalism, is found dead in a rooming house, in an outfit that has people talking. Joanne Kilbourn was friends with Reed's wife and has to be the one to break the news to her. Joanne is then caught in a web that includes one of her students, who has since gone missing. I haven't read any of the previous novels in the Joanne Kilbourn series and I didn't feel as though I was lost or confused by jumping in half way through. It's good to note that there are some spoilers from the previous books. I did enjoy the novel, it was a light mystery with a solid main character. Joanne did seem to have this perfectness about her that I wasn't too big of a fan of. The book did seem long in some parts and I could of dealt without some of the minor story lines.