No, not the horrible children's story but rather my book club book. I know some people seem to prefer my spoiler reviews, but I just don't feel right giving the spoilers of a mystery story. Still, I'll endeavor to give a more engaging review than the non-spoiler ones usually are.
The story itself is in a series of novels focusing on Chief Inspector Wexford, a British police officer in a town called Kingsmarkham. In this tale Wexford is told of some missing children and their babysitter, believed to be drowned in a flood that has swept the area. Wexford doesn't believe the children have drowned, but the more he looks into it, the more twisted and bizarre the case becomes. The house was left in perfect order before the parents arrived home, no forced entry, the beds made, a the children's coats are even missing, as if they and their babysitter only left for an outing. Except none of them ever returned.
I admit the book didn't seem too promising to me at first, but I feel it got better. It starts with some crazy religious ceremony in the woods. Of course, I knew that had to be part of the mystery, but I didn't feel invested in it, crazy religious ceremonies not being my primary area of interest. Still, I perked up when I found the book takes place in Britain (something I might have guessed from the name "Wexford" but didn't") and the author is British herself. I tend to favor the British style of writing over the American. Maybe I'm just a snob that way, but I just prefer their turn of phrase to ours.
Flipping through the book, I had also glimpsed a line something like "Please, find my darling children!" which seemed a bit over the top to me. But I soon learned that the character who utters that line is a bit over the top herself, which made me feel considerably better about it. The religious thing, as I expected, served a purpose, but I couldn't really guess exactly what until very near the end.
The main character, Chief Inspector Wexford, was okay. He wasn't exactly as much of a personality as Holmes, but he wasn't a complete camera. However, sometimes I would get a little disoriented when the author would change character perspectives, particulalrly if it was a different police officer because they tended to think similarly to Wexford. In addition to that, I felt that his family life was often a plot device to help him figure out the mystery, but perhaps his family are better developed in the other books. It's a very old series that's been around since the 60s, but this book is new (from 2002) and the writing didn't seem dated, so the author has adapted well enough to the times. Otherwise, Wexford was at least a believable and credible main character, very human, a rock surrounded by rather crazy suspects.
As for the actual mystery, I did manage to guess some aspects of it, but it was a bit like a game of clue where you might know it's Colonel Mustard, but you don't necessarily know if it was in the drawing room with the candlestick or in the parlor with the knife. And you may never know what his motive was in the first place. Luckily, unlike Clue, I did eventually get a motive, but it was admittedly not exactly what I was expecting, though I had narrowed down the suspect before they named the person. Actually, in a way, I was both right and wrong about who was responsible for the crime. At the same time it wasn't out of the blue. There were clues that could have helped you guess at everything. The mystery just had so many facets that you weren't likely to guess all of them.
So, I did like it enough to stay up later than even I usually do to finish it. Do I recommend it? Well, if my review intrigued you, I'd say try reading to the part with the first meeting with the parents of the missing children. If you're not interested by then, you probably won't be later.
Oh, and if you do read this book, do NOT read the summary first. It reveals something that doesn't happen until 1/3rd of the way through the book and pretty much eliminated several possibilities for me right off the bat.
Well, that's all for now. If you got this far, I hope it wasn't just because someone tied you to a chair with your eyelids taped open. Thanks for reading!
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