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In this book, the owner of the Green Vase antiques shop dies in mysterious circumstances and leaves the shop to his niece who moves in with her two cats. She is immediately latched onto my Monty Carmichael whose nosiness helps her with the mystery. It turns out that the fate of her uncle is intricately linked with the fate of William Leidesdorff, a man who was influential in the early days of San Francisco and the gold rush.
It was only when I went to make notes for this review that I realised that I never knew the name of the main character. When I visited the author’s website it is revealed that the anonymous narrator is a cunning way to indicate that “she is introverted and shy” and to reflect the “ongoing struggle to find out who Uncle Oscar was”. In reality, the book held my attention so poorly that I didn’t really notice that the main character didn’t have a name. Sorry, all of that cleverness was lost on me and I think that most readers felt the same way too.
I found the San Francisco and gold rush history tedious (maybe this is because I am not American?) and I felt that the author got carried away with the historical side to such an extent that the mystery part of the book was lost. It seemed that the author was trying to be a little too clever for her own good and probably as a historical novel, the writing style would have worked well, but as a mystery – well, I wasn’t so convinced. Clues that were meant to be subtle stood out like a sore thumb and when it came to the climax, it was so rushed that even when I re-read the last chapters there were a host of question marks over what happened. Maybe this is to leave things open ended for the next books, but instead of it piquing my interest, I just felt *meh*.
It seemed like such a promising book, but all I wanted to do was to finish it as soon as possible so I could read a book that I actually enjoyed.
Murder! She Read 