Jan Neuharth

POSSIBLE SPOILERS below.

This was an interesting, and generally well-written 'murder mystery.' I put the genre in quotes like that since I don't really think of it as a mystery where the reader could collect clues to solve whodunit. That characters are interesting, albeit slightly underdeveloped. The resulution has a deus ex machina quality to it leaving the reader slighly unsatisfied. Even the murderer's motivations feel rather contrived and hollow when you get to them.
The glimpse into the "tweedy moneyed hunting set" is moderately interesting, but doesn't really get much below the skin and really serves little purpose to advance the plot. The author includes a preface to defend hunt club people as being really nice and not at all like in the book, so then why does her novel write tehm right back into their stereotypes?

The best part of the book--and actauly quite intriguing--was how the protagonist's situations led to suspicion and how circumstantial evidence could appear so damning, when the reader knew better than the police. That part was actually rather chilling, especially in light of a cop with an axe to grind and a shortage of objectivity. The role of the media was briefly explored, but left to meander and again die without making a profound observation.

This book could have been better, but really seemed like the author had a different goal than writing a good mystery.… (meer)