Customer Reviews

Death and the Lit Chick (A St. Just Mystery)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the highlights of my 2008 reading was Death of a Cozy Writer by G. M. Malliet, the first mystery to feature DCI St. Just of Cambridgeshire. I was so completely hooked by the first novel that I pre-ordered the second, Death of a Lit Chick, as soon as amazon.com listed it. I wondered a bit whether the follow-up would be as satisfying, mainly because Malliet created such deliciously wicked characters in Sir Adrian's family, and of course, the only recurring character is DCI St. Just. I needn't have worried, because Death of a Lit Chick features an equally engaging cast of characters. DCI St. Just travels to Dalmorton Castle in Scotland for a mystery writer's conference (he has been asked to attend as a speaker) and finds himself confronted with a gaggle of mystery writers, all with clashing personalities and huge egos, along with a publisher, agents, and a journalist. When ditzy superstar "chick lit" writer Kimberlee Kalder turns up dead, there is no shortage of suspects. St. Just is asked to assist the local constabulary with their investigations, which culminate in a hilariously over-the-top drawing room scene worthy of Agatha Christie. A cast of suspects including mystery writers is a challenge, as they all make things up for a living and seem unable to turn off the prevarication under interrogation. As St. Just unravels the web of secrets and lies, the deliciously complex plot comes to a logical yet surprising conclusion. Malliet manages to embrace the classic cozy mystery while satirizing its conventions with her sharp wit, and as we learn more about DCI St. Just, he becomes even more endearing. I'll be pre-ordering the next in the series as well.

I had high hopes for this "Cozy" book as a needed escape from the bad news we have been exposed to from every medium. Malliet attempted to satirize mystery writers and the genre and fell far short. Her detective St. Just is both shallow and pompous and the mystery writers that populate this book are superficial or shrill, sometimes both. Love interest, Portia De'Ath (this name was too precious) had no substance. It is incomprehensible to me why St, Just was interested in her or she in him for that matter. The best mystery writers have the ability to make us care about the fate of their creations. (Read Reginald Hills "The Price of Butchers Meat" ) Cardboard characters and a not very interesting plot line sink this humorless book. I have to admit the cover was great and it was downhill from there.

She's done it again - another hit. I was so intrigued by G.M. Malliet's "Death of a Cozy Writer, that I simply had to order her second St. Just Mystery. Glad I did. It was refreshing to see that DCI St. Just has moved beyond the first cast of characters( though I enjoyed them so much as well...) into new settings and characters. The theme of the story still revolves around mystery writers' conventions of sorts, but we've moved on to castles, hotel rooms and another murder, of all things! What could be better than playing the board game "Clue" for the first time on a stormy night?...."Death and the Lit Chick". It's a fun read, particularly by a wood fire with a glass of good port, and a refreshing retreat from today's wordly concerns. I highly recommend it to you!

After Death of a Cozy Writer I was really looking forward to this book. After the character introductions the book fell flat on it's face. The dialogue , if you can call it that, was very stilted and unreal. The plot was so hokey that I finally cut to the denouement at the end and that was really off the wall. It seems the sole purpose was to write a book slamming authors, agents and publishers. A couple of other reviewers described the characters as cardboard cutouts and I agree with that. Obviously written in a hurry to take advantage of the response to her first St. Just book.

This book is written in the classic mystery style -- a secluded place where it seems like the killer must be one of a small group of people; a series of interrogations by the clever detective; and a scene where the detective confronts the killer in the presence of all the suspects -- the ta-da moment when the killer is unveiled and the "how it was done" is explained. Personally, I'm not fond of that way of telling a classic mystery -- I like things besides endless interrogations of suspects/witnesses and I dislike the drawing rooom unveiling of the killer method.

The plot involves a conference of mystery writers, meeting in Scotland. Most of the writers are staying at a castle, complete with a moat, dungeon, and priest's hole, and one dark and stormy night, one of the writers is killed. Since the moat keeps them separate and the drawbridge is up (power failure), it seems that the killer must be one of the residents of the castle. Fortunately, police detective St. Just is staying at the castle -- he's one of the speakers at the conference.

I could accept all this, except when all was said and done, the solution was preposterous. The motive was not clear to me -- and it was ridiculously complicated.

On the plus side, the Scottish castle in winter setting was charming. I wish the author had set a few scenes in Edinburgh itself or made better use of the Scottish setting. Aside from a couple of Scottish characters, the castle might as well have been located in Finland.

The author is clearly talented, and I will certainly read her next book, if nothing else, on the strength of how well I liked the first in the series.

Everybody's bumped into the chick-lit mysteries -- they usually have an artful looking body, a sexy woman, and fluff between the covers.

And they get a thorough skewering in "Death and the Lit Chick," the second of G.M. Malliet's mysteries featuring Detective Chief Inspector St. Just. Malliet spins together a clever little mystery with some clever turns of phrase (a creepy little man is referred to as being "oily like undercooked salmon"), but she stumbles a bit on the characterization -- especially of the Required Love Interest.

Kimberlee Kalder has become the darling of the Deadly Dagger publishing house, with her bestselling "Dying For a Latte" chick-lit/mystery. She's also completely arrogant, hinting herself to be superior to Jane Austen, George Eliot and Edith Wharton.

But jealousy starts roiling when St. Just attends a mystery convention at a remote Scottish castle, where Kimberlee's success and arrogant attitude start rubbing people the wrong way. So it's not exactly a huge shock when, during a power outage, someone finds Kimberlee dead in the bottle dungeon.

So now St. Just must interview the people there, and find what motive (other than professional jealousy) might have prompted murder... all while getting distracted by the comely rising star, Portia De'Ath. And he starts getting a pretty good idea of the kind of person Kimberlee was, and the nasty secrets connected to her -- schemes, affairs, old muckraking, and other fun details -- just in time for another murder.

Apparently G.M. Malliet's series has a "theme" -- murder mysteries set around murder mystery writers, which admittedly is kind of a limited field. But she has some fun with "Death and the Lit Chick," mostly in aptly lampooning the publishing industry's rivalries, flaws and backstabbing. Not to mention skewering the trend of writing chick-lit books with a lightweight murder mystery and/or industry whining.

And Malliet does a pretty good job making a cozy weekend murder in an old castle, with some lovely descriptions ("its dark drum tower and arrow-slit turrets starkly outlined against a blue-moonstone sky") and clever phrases ("she didn't half stand out like a Viking at a luau"). It really is difficult to figure out who the murderer is, since there are plenty of suspects and an ever-increasing pile of motives, but he sprinkles some decent clues along the way.

And there's some valiant efforts at flashing out St. Just's personality, with some haunting grief about his late wife gumming up the works early on. Unfortunately he's too instantly infatuated by the cutesy-named Portia De'Ath, and too willing to dismiss the possibility that a woman he's just met (who seems intent on horning into police procedure) could be guilty.

Fortunately the supporting characters are a little steadier -- Malliet has fun with the hard-as-nails ex-agent and future agent/boyfriend, geek hubby, flamboyant Barbra Cartlandesque bestseller of yesteryear, and rivals ranging from an explosive arrogant thriller-writer to a frumpy nonentity.

"Death and the Lit Chick" has a big flaw in St. Just's instant infatuation with Portia, but the rest of the novel is a pleasant, vaguely cozy mystery (with more than a hint of publishing satire).

This is my personal favorite of the three DCI St. Just books, although they all stand as top-notch mysteries. In Death and The Lit Chick the author perfectly blends complexity, plot, and satire, and limns her characters with the sinuous economy and verve we have come to expect. Bright Youngish Author Portia De'ath fairly comes to life in these pages, and her nascent relationship with St. Just evolves in both a plausible and endearing way. In a more general sense, I would remind readers that this is a gentle parody of the chick lit genre, and the plump cheeks of literary convention will be pinched. But in the end, what distinguishes successful novelists from the competition is how well they tell stories, and G.M. Malliet possesses story-telling ability, and possesses it in spades.

However you want to classify this book - satire, humor, suspense - it delivers on all fronts. I haven't ever enjoyed a "cozy" read this much, but I must say it doesn't really fit that description. It's sophisticated, funny, and (above all) smart.

This clever, well-written, skillfully plotted whodunit, which also pokes fun at the world of mystery writing and publishing, is even more hilarious than the author's first novel, "Death of a Cozy Writer." Again, the sleuth is Cambridge Detective Chief Inspector Arthur St. Just. This time he is attending a crime writers' conference at an old Scottish castle in Edinburgh.

Also in attendance is Kimberlee Kalder, a seemingly airheaded young author of wildly popular chick-lit mysteries, who is detested by most of the other writers, who include Magretta Sincock, a flamboyant, formerly successful author who uses the same woman-in-jeopardy plots again and again; Joan Elksworthy, a British expat who lives in New Mexico and writes mysteries set in Scotland; Tom Brackett, an unpleasant writer of spy thrillers, and his downtrodden wife, Edith, who writes and illustrates a popular series of children's books; Annabelle Pace, a writer of inaccurately detailed forensic mysteries; Donna Doone, an aspiring author who is working on a dreadful mystery set in prehistoric times and featuring Neanderthal characters; and Portia De'Ath, a criminologist and crime writer who is also St. Just's love interest. Kimberlee is found dead in the dungeon, and it's up to St. Just and the Edinburgh police detectives to solve the crime.

There's some wickedly satirical dialogue among the writers. A few examples: "Prologues are so last year." "You have to have a corpse by page fifty-seven." "The murder has to take place in the first five pages. Otherwise the reader loses interest." "Also she [the victim] made her name infamous on a few mystery listserves for her blatant self-promotion."

I highly recommend this book to readers who enjoy Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and other Golden Age authors, and also to fans of Robert Barnard, Caroline Graham, Martha Grimes and other contemporary writers of traditional mysteries.

G. M. Maillet's new offering 'Death & The Lit Chick' is a beautifully written and tightly crafted page turner. Wondeful plot and character development exceeds her highly acclaimed first book, 'Death of a Cozy Writer'. I couldn't put it down.