Reviews for Snobbery with Violence (Edwardian Murder Series #1)

The average rating for Snobbery with Violence (Edwardian Murder Series #1) based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-23 00:00:00 Varinthorn Pulsirivong After reading so many TSTL female heroines in YA fiction lately, I decided it was time for a change of pace. A nice, cozy turn-of-the century historical sleuthing mystery. Sure, why not? I generally love my historical female sleuths, be it the spirited Lady Julia Grey, the lovely and undaunted Lady Emily Ashford, or hell, even the admittedly grating and bookish Amelia Peabody. Surely, Lady Rose Summers would be just the thing to bring to a stop my current trend of face-palming every five second as I read about yet another dumb 21st century teenaged chick diving headfirst into danger or heading in the path of a dragon (true story, remember Jenny?). She sounds awesome, too!!! A suffragette, a privileged daughter of a peer, yet not indifferent to the plights of the working class. Surely this intelligent young woman and her gentleman detective friend will be just the thing to bring my spirits up and restore my faith in humanity (womanity?). Holy crap, I have never been so wrong. Ok, I did get some things right from the summary. She is a peer's daughter, she is sympathetic to those not of her privileged class, and she is a suffragette. On all other fronts, however, she is dumb, dumb, dumb. Our Lady Rose misguided, spoiled, and stubbornheaded to rival a bull, maybe a minotaur. A minotaur might be less annoying. Did I mention she is spoiled? She is the only child of a very wealthy Earl and his wife, and has gotten her way her entire life. Her mother is silly, her father your typical bluff, brash, genial, but extremely softhearted when it comes to his only child. As a result, Rose is permitted to do things and get away with things that would be unheard of for a peer's daughter. All she has to do is protest and her father gives in. She was brought into feminism and the suffragette movement by a governess, and like a willful child, uses the movement as her own means to behave like a willful child, rather than standing for its ideals. Even her former governess is disgusted by her actions. "Do you mean you consider me a disgrace?" "Unlike you, my lady, I have to earn my living. I was always of the opinion that you were a bit spoilt." "Why didn't you say so?" "It was not my place to do so." Lady Rose feels she is superior to other debutantes, and after her disgrace regarding her confrontation with a suitor, she is severely lacking in friends. Only then does she realize that she has been a stuffy, superior pain-in-the-ass. She also has an annoying tendency to blame everyone and anyone but her own actions for her misfortune and fall from grace. The plot is unbearably stupid, and we don't even get into the real plot until halfway through the book. Within the first half of the book, we are introduced to Captain Harry, the idiotic Brooding Gentleman Rake Who Suffers From a War Trauma (sigh) and his various forays into amateurish sleuthing for money, as he is completely and utterly broke. He is not much better than Rose in terms of likeability. He is... "...bitter, brooding and taciturn, and he seemed unable to converse in anything other than cliches or grunts." And for your information, no, he does not improve throughout the book. Our introduction to him goes by ways of following him through his idiotic methods of solving petty crimes and problems, including making up a chicken pox outbreak and blowing up a train station to prevent the Prince from consorting with Lady Rose. His reasoning? "I had to make sure the palace thought it the work of the Bolsheviks. Anything less, and they might have suspected Lord Hadshire of getting up to tricks. The palace sent a telegram just before we left, cancelling the king's visit 'for reasons of national security.'" In this day and age, we would call that terrorism, or at the very least, extreme lunacy. Lady Rose and Harry hated each others' guts throughout most of the story; I actually hated them both for the entire story.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-06-22 00:00:00 George Spontak An average mystery set during the Edwardian era, this book left me cold. The writing was clean but primitive, and the characters only sketched out. Nobody is alive in the novel, and I didn't care for anyone there. What the author does show is a huge class divide. It is gaping wide open, and the police is only free to do their jobs if the lower classes are involved. Murder is committed at a house party of a marquis, but nobody from the upper class could have done it. Aristocracy don't commit crimes, do they? No investigation is required, and a pressure is brought to bear on the police officer in charge to pronounce the death accidental. Or else. And he does what he is told. Even after out protagonists stir trouble, and a second body is discovered drowned in a moat, the author went out of her way to make the conclusion acceptable to the aristocracy, as if she wrote it in 1903 instead of 2003, the year of publication. No criminal is brought to justice, but all the loose ends are firmly tucked in. A faintly boring tale.