Customer Reviews

Dead Crazy (Jenny Cain Mysteries, No. 5)

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

While the writing style was good and the plot was interesting, it was easy to imagine that this book had been written just a little too quickly. I was suprised by some of the plot holes and obviousnesses given the general high quality of the writing.

This novel is set in small-town New England and features Jenny Cain, the woman in charge of the areas philanthropical foundation (very much like Indianapolis' Lilly Foundation) that makes investments and gives grants for the public good. The foundation is asked to buy a building so that it can be converted into a recreation/meeting hall for the mentally ill of the community - a place where they can get out of the cold and still be welcome. But, things quickly get complicated when people start dying in and around the building and a mentally ill man is the main suspect.

The characters are believable, the book is well-paced and the killer is a surprise (I thought I had it figured out for about half the book, but ... I was wrong).

What I like about Nancy Pickard is that she writes more than a mystery. She does a nice job here with the social services world. It is the balance between that world and the "crime fiction" that I was expecting that drew me in. She does a great job with settings -- most commonly in the few Jenny Cain books I've read, with the cold, dreary New England winters. She handles issues of mental illness in an adept and realistic fashion, without getting too heavy or losing the pacing that a mystery should hvae.

I do not like light-weight "mysteries" or suspense stories, of which this novel is a paradigm. The protagonist tries to be witty, in a kind of purified, decadent French way, but she still sounds like a hick from upstate New York. Her relationship with her lazy employee (Derek) would only work if she had a good, meaty affair with him. The story pooh-poohs the presence of a recreation hall for seriously ill men and women. Only a fool would not object to a facility that is designed for failure: the mentally ill will be allowed to wander in and out of this playground. The plot moves along "smoothly" with no edge, no suspense, leaving the reader numbed from its extreme dullness.