If I expected last week's post would be short, this week's entry will be practically non-existent! I had alot of "dental drama" last week, so was not really in the mood to read, then I was away for the weekend, so again, no reading getting done there; therefore, I am not much further along in my book this week than I was last week. I was just going to skip writing a post this week, but it feels wrong somehow to not write anything, and I thought that surely I could think of something to write about that is book-related, even if it's not about something I've recently read. Here goes...
I'm still reading Peter Robinson's Before the Poison, the award-winning stand-alone that I started I think last week. I actually just found out that he has another book coming out in the "Inspector Banks" series (sorry, I don't remember what it's called). I hope to finish it by the weekend so I can start on my next book club selection with plenty of time to read it and prepare for the meeting. This novel is a ghost story, not a police procedural. I think I mentioned in my last post that it reminds me of one of my favourite novels, Rebecca, and the similarities are continuing well into the novel - they both deal with the "ghost", or "presence", of a past resident of a huge house that is practically a character in itself, a woman with a mysterious past, and the house's new resident who is obsessed with the story and with finding out the truth about the past. I also mentioned the similarities with Minette Walters, particularly with the use of article excerpts to fill the reader in on the story about the mysterious woman. He also uses this woman's diary entries later in the book. All of this is very interesting, and I'm really enjoying the novel, savouring it slowly rather than rushing through it. The only "criticism" I have, and I'm not sure that it's really a criticism, more of a comment, is that the main character, Chris Lowndes, is not really that interesting as a character. I mean, he's just kind of "there" to move the story along, but he is portrayed as rather bland - the novel does not make this reader want to know about his life before the story begins. In fact, I just had to look at the inside flap of the book to check what the character's name is, which illustrates my point exactly. I find that very interesting in itself, since Inspector Alan Banks is such an interesting character that I would be willing to read a novel about his "life" even if there were no murders or mysteries to solve. I guess the difference is that this is a stand-alone so the character will not appear in the next book in the series, and it is not really about the character or his personal or psychological development. It is more about the discovery of the past and the characters that existed and the events that took place half a decade before. I really am enjoying it, it's just different from his other novels, but not in a bad way. Hmmm... perhaps Robinson did this intentionally, yet another similarity to Rebecca, which features a nameless heroine. In both books, the real "stars" are the dead women, Grace Fox and Rebecca de Winter, and the story is really concerned with the mysterious events surrounding their deaths. Interesting... I never thought of that similarity before. For more information about Peter Robinson, please check out his website at: http://www.inspectorbanks.com/books/. Enjoy!!
Alright, I've run out of things to say about this book, and now that I have a cup of tea beside me, I'm quite anxious to get reading (the pace of my reading is far slower that I would like, due to various circumstances as mentioned above, so I really do want to get on with it and finish this excellent mystery).
Bye for now!
Julie
PS I think the new "Inspector Banks" novel is entitled Watching the Dark - that may be a working title.
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