Phyllis Dorothy is an old favourite of mine, a very reliable procedural writer. My crime fiction taste runs as much to this Restrained English style as to Hardboiled American or Tartan Noir (via Larrikan Aussie, naturally). But somehow I found The Lighthouse, though well plotted & apparently imaginative, did not grab me, grip me or even pluck at my sleeve. I don't want to put you off this book, or indeed any of P.D.James' wonderful canon, but for me this one was bland. We love a great crime novel, and The Lighthouse is, perhaps, simply predictably good.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Lighthouse
Phyllis Dorothy is an old favourite of mine, a very reliable procedural writer. My crime fiction taste runs as much to this Restrained English style as to Hardboiled American or Tartan Noir (via Larrikan Aussie, naturally). But somehow I found The Lighthouse, though well plotted & apparently imaginative, did not grab me, grip me or even pluck at my sleeve. I don't want to put you off this book, or indeed any of P.D.James' wonderful canon, but for me this one was bland. We love a great crime novel, and The Lighthouse is, perhaps, simply predictably good.
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3 comments:
Did you read it on a foggy day?
A lighthouse is always more impressive on a foggy day, I thinkski.
Read it on a foggy day nex time.
Good advice.
What meterological conditions would you suggest for reading 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'?
Maybe it's the title? I had a similar reaction to "Lighthouse" by William Monahan. A clever book (one reviewer wrote- "If James Joyce had rewritten 'The Tempest', tossing in some gunplay and a duffel of stolen drug money, he might have approximated 'Lighthouse' "), but after a while I got the feeling that the author knew exactly how clever he was being, which is never a good thing. It was still an enjoyable book, and a fast read; I was just left with the gnawing feeling that there wasn't as much there there as there might have been.
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