MURDER
IN THE GREEN
by
LESLEY
COOKMAN
THE
BLURB:
Libby Sarjeant and her
friend Fran become involved in the strange rituals of the local
Morris Men after one of them is found dead on May Day and another
seems to have vanished into thin air.
Libby goes out of her
comfort zone as far as Cornwall in search of the solution which, in
the end, is found much closer to home, turning out to be the most
unpleasant case she has dealt with yet.
THE
REALITY:
Ye Gods, this was a hard
one to plough through from the start! I found this read difficult to
get into- although the pagan/ goth/ druid/ ancient/ ceremonial/
witchcraft theme is right up my street- and I think that was down to
waaaaay too many characters being introduced at the beginning of the
novel. This pace of introduction didn't seem to let up enough for me
to catch my breath! I found it hard trying to establish who everyone
was and certainly had to backtrack to investigate (I have to take
some of the blame here- this was one book I found putdownable, and
that meant that I'd forgotten certain things, which forced the need
to double-check characters and names). It continued to be
relentless, though, with characters added constantly and all over the place, although they mostly did seem to
have some relevance to the story.
I also didn't gel with
the style of writing on offer here. There were long dialogue scenes
without speech tags, so you had to concentrate really carefully, or
you had to backtrack to make the “who-said-what” make sense.
Also, some of the connecting explanations were unspecific, so I ended
up having “who-did-what?” and “who-is-doing-what?” moments as
well. Whilst studying creative writing I was always warned against
creating expositions which lead nowhere. On page 74, the Wildes and
the Parkers were mentioned. Now, these were two families, but
neither had been mentioned before, so I found myself flicking
backwards to the start of the book trying to pinpoint exactly whom a
character was referring to. It's only when you get much further into
the book that you realise that Ben's surname is Wilde- and I never
did find out who the Parkers were as they were never even mentioned!
Apart from that, the book
romped along in its quest to find the murderer of both Bill and John,
and the storyline was not awful- it's just a shame that the writing
wasn't great. It started off less-than-best and never got better.
By the time we got to the conclusion, which involved someone you
never would have thought was guilty, I just didn't care, and was keen
to get this book over and done with.
For some strange reason, when Libby was with Lewis in Cornwall, she seemed to develop a different accent. Was she easily influenced by Lewis, who did speak in a rather affected way (although I did like this character)? Incidentally, I didn't like Ben
as a partner for Libby from the start- he didn't sound like a good
match for her, and she almost seemed to fear upsetting him. He
wanted a commitment that she seems unsure of, so my initial instinct
was that she should have just dumped him.
I feel I have to name
some good points, and the country/ village settings and
“olde-English” traditions basis for the book was very appealing,
and definitely for fans of countryside romps (although this read
wasn't overtly sexual.) You also had a good mix of interesting characters. But I don't think I'll be wanting to read
another novel by this author anytime soon.
