Challenge Tuesday – 15

I’m a bit late tonight as I’ve been at a meeting (I had to present a piece on the writing group) so this one is probably going to be brief. Although, I said last week’s would be concise and I was wrong… 🙂

Book 15 – Death in the South of France, by Jane Jakeman. This was another of my nan’s old crime stories.

Following the deaths of a number of people in Cannes, victims of ‘The Mutilator’, a young British woman called Rosie Cashel is murdered in the town and her half-brother flies to France.  The police don’t think they’re related but as the story follows the investigations into the crimes  by the police, the investigating magistrate and by Rosie’s brother Charlie, a spiderweb of interconnected matters forms with Rosie’s murder somehow in the middle.

The story covers drugs, gangsters, betrayal, false evidence, theft, fraud, police brutality, racism and of course murder.  In fact, this book has so many things going on I can’t give a proper synopsis. There are multiple viewpoint characters – some only the key character for a page or two – which can be confusing.

The characters are a mixed bag, to be honest. I have no handle on most of them from the descriptions given or their actions, and despite reading 317 pages I still couldn’t give you the name or a description of the lead police officer.

The book was also a little bit choppy for my tastes – some chapters were particularly short, but also some sections seemed to end abruptly as though something was heavily edited but not re-proofed.  The style seemed unusual and I normally associate it with male writers.

One really odd thing for me was the lack of any sort of climax or denouement.  I’ve never read something of this genre where there is no tangible change in timing or pace.

The book was good in other ways though.  The graphic nature of the crimes could have been impossible to read but it was written in a way that made me nervous to begin with but more relaxed as I realised it wasn’t going to get worse.  The setting was unusual for me and worked to keep the story vivid but also to show how out of place the gangster was.

Finally, the book kept me reading, which is what we all want, right?  Whatever its limitations the story was engrossing enough for me to have read about half of it in one day, which I don’t tend to do any more!

So there we go – an interesting book with some style choices that don’t attract me but with the bonus of engaging my interest.  It’s not a book I’ll re-read any time soon but there were a few unexpected twists and turns and the loose ends were tied up in a few different bows showing that everything isn’t always quite what you expect.

Happy reading,

EJ

🙂