Guy Burt

This was a very weak season. Pope Alexander VI was relegated very much to the background, while Cesare was the main character. They really ought to have called this "The Cesare Borgia Show." Luckily Francois Arnaud is talented and charismatic enough that he could carry the whole season by himself. I also *really* did not like how they decided to go the incest route with Cesare and Lucrezia - it was considered a salacious rumor by people at the time, and I'm really disappointed that the writers chose to run with it just to shock us. Also, there were WAY too many convenient coincidences, characters running into eachother to facilitate plot developments, people getting there/doing something at just the right time. Honestly just a letdown.… (meer)

Five students descend into a secret room on campus, locked in by a fellow student as part of what they believe will be the greatest prank yet. But when no one comes to let them out, they begin to realize they might be part of a far more terrifying psychological experiment instead.

This is a creepy, suspenseful, gripping read. Burt uses flashbacks of "the Hole" expertly to both lead the reader on and keep them guessing.

The last chapter adds a whole other dimension to the story, and was definitely a major twist. I thought it was really clever-I love an ending that has me thinking back through the book to see what I missed and how everything fits.

Some of the sections moved really slowly, especially some of the flashbacks in "the Hole" early on in the story.

This is a really quick read-it just took me a few hours-and a gripping, scary, interesting one. It's worth picking up. The movie version is really good, and is actually one of those very rare occasions when I prefer the movie slightly to the book… (meer)

In Series 1, Susan, a former codebreaker at Bletchley Park, has mostly settled into a comfortable life as a mother and a wife. However, part of her can't help but look for patterns everywhere, and she's convinced she's found one in a series of murders. The problem is convincing the police that the pattern she sees exists, especially since her first tip turns out to be wrong. She enlists the help of Millie, Lucy, and Jean, other former Bletchley Park codebreakers.

Series 2 includes two different mysteries. In the first, Alice, a former colleague of Jean's at Bletchley, has confessed to a murder that Jean is convinced she didn't commit. Jean enlists Lucy and Millie's help in proving her innocence. Susan occasionally joins in, but the events that brought their previous investigation to a close frightened her very badly. She doesn't want to risk that harm might come to her, her children, or her husband. In the second mystery, Alice suspects that Millie has been kidnapped, possibly due to her involvement in the post-war black market.

I loved the premise: former Bletchley Park codebreakers using their skills and wartime contacts to solve crimes, even as they tried to deal with their problems at home (Lucy's husband was abusive, Millie had problems staying employed and making enough money to live on, and Susan's husband had no idea, due to the Official Secrets Act, that she had been more than just a secretary during the war). Series 1 was excellent. It was fun watching the women accumulate and try to make sense of data, doing the kind of work they'd thrived on during the war and that, because they were women, few people in the postwar world seemed to think they were capable of. I was at the edge of my seat, waiting to see whether they could find a pattern and find the killer. Would they be able to get the cops to believe and help them, or would they go the riskier route and try to pin down the killer themselves? And would Susan's obsession with the case ruin her marriage?

Susan's marriage was a source of great anxiety for me. Susan's husband was a bit stiff, and I hated that he didn't seem to realize that she was slowly stagnating. It was unfair of me, because he didn't know about her past and she couldn't tell him without breaking the law, but I couldn't help it. However, I softened towards him when he misunderstood a particular incident and thought that the secret Susan had been keeping from him was that she'd been trying to help Lucy run away from her abusive husband. He forgave her for not telling him everything because she'd (he thought) been trying to do something good for a friend.

It was painful to see Susan so wary and afraid in Series 2 – after the end of Series 1, she knew very well the kind of danger she could inadvertently expose herself and her family to, and she wanted none of it. Millie, cat-like, seemed to have landed on her feet again, managing to find an interesting if somewhat strange (to her sensibilities as a wartime codebreaker) job as a translator for German businessmen. I also loved that Lucy was thriving now that she no longer lived with her husband. Pretty much the only person whose life didn't seem to have changed in the slightest was Jean. I kind of wish that the show had included a little bit of what her life was like outside of her work at the library and her occasional collaborations with the former Bletchley women. She seemed to have maintained an awesome number of wartime contacts.

I really wanted Susan to stay with the group. Although I liked the developments that led to her leaving, the second mystery in Series 2 felt incomplete without her. Alice was nice and had her own personal issues (trying to find a job despite the negative reputation that the trial gave her, so that she could afford to pay for her daughter's teacher training), but it wasn't the same. Unfortunately, I don't think that there was a historically accurate way for four women of limited (or no) means to keep in touch with Susan while she was in another country.

The second mystery of Series 2 had more wrong with it than just the lack of Susan. In Series 1, the women were well aware that they weren't cops and that, while they might be able to find a pattern in a series of murders, they weren't really equipped to take down a killer. In the second mystery of Series 2, they took horrific risks with barely a second thought. They were very, very lucky that everything worked out perfectly and that none of them died.

When I started this show, I thought that Susan, Millie, Jean, and Lucy would end up proving their crime-solving usefulness and end up as unofficial consultants for the police. I'm a little disappointed that it didn't turn out that way and that the group crumbled so quickly. Series 1 was definitely worth watching, but Series 2 wasn't nearly as good (aside from developments between Susan and her husband). Sadly, I'm not surprised it wasn't renewed for a third series.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (meer)

SPOILER: While their parents think they are on a field trip and the school thinks they are at home, 5 kids will spend 3 days in the Hole, a windowless cellar in their school. Martyn, the instigator of the prank, will remain above ground, promising that when the 5 emerge, they'll have been part of the greatest prank ever. But Martyn doesn't come to get them... In a plot twist, the story turns out to have been written by Liz, the only survivor in the Hole. How much of it was true? Was it Liz's idea? Did she and Martyn cook up the prank? Very British; found Liz's ruminations pretentious but perhaps that's part of the mystery of who Liz was.… (meer)