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.
