Monday, February 09, 2009

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

I had heard that this book was good but that’s not true. It’s a silly book and a waste of time. Set in Victorian London, Silent in the Grave is a weird combination of a Sherlock Holmes story and a romance novel. The Holmesian detective, Nicholas Brisbane, rather than coming across as mysterious, instead seems robotic and off-putting. The female protagonist, Julia, is supposed to be clever and ahead of her time, but she just seems anachronistic. And for someone who is meant to be smart, she is awfully dense. It takes her a long time to figure things out and I think this is a deliberate ploy on the part of the author to s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the action. This book is 506 pages of dithering (Julia) and glowering (Nicholas). Luckily I only read 109 of them.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

500+ pages? Brutal. Why are authors making all these books so long lately? (Sorry, I'm still reeling from the unnecessary length of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.)

Becky Holmes said...

Yes, me too! And several others that were really overly long. It's a waste of ink and paper.

Anonymous said...

Heh. I love your forthright style. So refreshing! I'll steer clear of this book.

Anonymous said...

I read this a few months ago and thought it was okay for what it was--women's fiction. Even though it may be trumped up as something else. Though I couldn't even begin to tell you what it was about ... which goes to show how memorable it was.

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