A Dangerous Goodbye by Fliss ChesterMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Three and a half stars.
1944, just after the end of WW2 in Europe.
Fen Churche and her fiancé Arthur shared a love of cryptic crosswords and often amused themselves by creating their own cryptic clues. When Fen receives a cryptic letter from Arthur, telling her he is probably dead she deciphers the clues which lead her to a small village in France. While she tries to discover what happened to Arthur Fen finds work at the local chateau helping the family harvest the grapes for their wine. There is an Englishman there helping with the harvest, from things he's said, Fen suspects he knew Arthur and the two of them were spies helping the Resistance against the Germans. But before Fen can dig deeper the local village priest is poisoned and dies at their breakfast table. Then the chateau owner's only son is found asphyxiated in the winery. Can Fen use her deductive reasoning to work out who is committing these crimes?
I had mixed feelings about this book. Whilst I love a cryptic crossword, I found Fen's habit of creating a crossword from random clues/words rather irritating, as was her repeated homily about finding the down words if you are stuck on the across word. Also, the killer's motivation seemed a bit bizarre, to just suddenly go on a killing rampage seemed a bit odd. Also, I have to say I guessed the murderer quite early on - albeit I had no idea why.
I am in two minds whether to read the next book to see whether it settles down a bit or just stop here.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment