Murder On Monday by Ann Purser

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I wanted to like this book.

I love the "cozy" style of mystery, and if the setting is English, so much the better. In those respects, this book was exactly what I expected. And I liked the notion that the amateur sleuth was a young working class mother with a working class husband.

There was nothing wrong with the mystery itself. And the author even managed some brief shifts of point of view (letting us into the minds of many of the suspects and some of the other villagers) deftly. The writing was unobjectionable--not stellar, but I didn't find myself editing the grammar and language as I went along, and for a thin little paperback that is what I require.

No, the problem is I don't like the amateur sleuth at the heart of the story. For all she's got some great kids, a supportive mom, and a not-perfect, but hard-working, loving husband, she's self-absorbed, quick to take offense, judgmental.... These, of course, are perfectly human attributes, and she's basically a decent human being, but I find I really don't want to spend time with her, her daughter, nor really even husband Derek. I certainly don't want to spend time with the coppers who use her to dig up information by snooping on her clients.

So, that was an interesting experience, but not one I think I'll repeat with any of the successive novels. Purser's books are published by the same house that does the Susan Wittig Albert China Bayles series. I think I'll stick to those.



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