Death Comes to Marlow

I liked it!

I can't give it less than three stars because the writing is great, the clues are fun and the characters are delightful!

Also, a highlight was how easy it was to traverse in the mind's eye the layout of the manor. The author doesn't flood with excessive amount of rooms and is very focused and iterative in how he presents it. As opposed to some Ellery Queen books where you literally have to chart the whole thing on a piece of paper. Even the amazing Hemlock Bay would be virtually unreadable should I not have charted the map of the bay in a notebook.

@james@bookrastinating.com compares Marlow Murder Club to the Osman's books, but I found this particular one more likeable and while I agree that the first Osman's book is significantly better than this one, I have a feeling that Osman is a cookie-cutter cheap thrills guy, and probably votes for Tories!

I won't bother to find the quote of the book, but I'll say that — the author is aware of the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies, which was very nice to see.

I started reading Thorogood’s first of this series once I’d devoured all of Richard Osman’s available books in the Thursday Murder Club series. OAPs solving murders? Well, tie me to the Typewriter and call me Angela Lansbury, we’ve got crimes to solve.

If I was to directly compare the Marlow series to the Thursday series, it does pale in comparison. I laugh my arse off at Richards work, but Robert just leaves me with a “that was nice, seeing the gang back together”. The gang being Judith, Becks and Suzie; three very different women in three different stages of life. They’re a nice awkward trio but they didn’t make me love them as much as I did in the first of the series.

The plot this time was… a plot. I was happy to go along to find out about the Olive Oil but then it turns out it was a red herring. The actual setup for the murder was… ridiculous, tbh. I wasn’t satisfied, though the author did do okay on misdirecting me most of the time from the real killer.

This was a book, it had a plot, there was a conclusion. I’ll read the next because I do like the gang but, I won’t be desperate for the next chapter in the story.