Customer Reviews

Cobweb (Severn House Large Print)

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I wanted to love this book. Indeed, I started to love this book. The narrator is a writer married to a semi-SAS thug with a heart of gold and they investigate things together. She's brave and accomplished; he depends on her and doesn't patronize. The woman often saves the man and no one makes a fuss about it.

Blissful.

Sadly, Duffy didn't leave a good idea alone. Not only is Ingrid, the narrating author/adventurer, a great shot with a steady hand in all crises, but she is arch. Very arch. Over-arch. She never simply narrates. She tosses in cute parentheticals and tosses off snarky throw-aways and makes digressions out of laundry lists.

Here's a one-sentence example. Ingrid is going to rescue Patrick in a dark basement full of gas and screaming. It's an ACTION sequence, and we are told:

"When the man she loves is being tortured and someone who is directly or indirectly responsible then lays hands on her and hurts her badly, a woman really can stab whoever it is with a real desire to kill." (180)

And that would be "whomever," wouldn't it? I mean, if we are going all la-te-da off our cuffs, up our sleeves?

OK, for the first 100 pages or so, I was charmed. But as the stakes rise, Ingrid becomes more and more rhetorically coy. And the solutions aren't any less artificial than the tone. Ingrid and Patrick always eat dinner in the right place. The homeless person they ask always has the answer they seek. A walk in the woods always yields case-breaking evidence. The bad guys are all obligingly stupid.

This might have been more palatable as a period-piece. In a sort of wink's-as-good-as-a-nod Nick and Nora or Harriet and Peter world, I don't think the hoards of coincidence would have grated so. And the tone might have fallen less cloyingly on the ear.

Yes, there is lots of action, believable or not. If you are feeling particularly full of the willingness of suspended disbelief, give this a try. Otherwise, wait for the next Deborah Crombie.