6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
beautifully written, bafflingly boring, January 21, 2007
This review is from: Debts of Dishonor: An Imogen Quy Mystery (Hardcover)
This is one of the best-written mysteries of the year, of, perhaps, several years. The narration and the dialogue are both exquisitely crafted, a real pleasure to read. Jill Paton Walsh's earlier novel, A Piece of Justice, is a very clever book and both of Walsh's Wimsy/Vane novels are good, so I leapt to read this one with high hopes.
It's boring.
Sadly, the main character is more than (less than?) boring: she's annoyingly boring. In A Piece of Justice, Imogen's profession (college nurse) fits in with the theme of women being undervalued by venerable institutions. The brilliant blend of quilts and higher mathematics makes the point about women's intellects and women's skills being funneled away from the paths of glory and into nurturing activities such as nursing and sewing. We are told that Imogen started to be a doctor, but, because of family emergencies, had to settle for being a nurse. OK, that works in the earlier book, along with the professor who specializes in 19th -century dress fabric imports and the women who first attended Cambridge but couldn't get degrees. Here, however, in a novel without a discernable theme, Imogen's fall-back career seems remarkably like laziness. We are given to understand that she's youngish - thirties? - and attractive and healthy and financially stable: why doesn't she just go to med school? Walsh's attempt to give us a modern-day Miss Marple overlooks the changes in the world - even in the world of Cambridge. No one would think twice about a woman going to med school now, even in her fifties, let alone her thirties. Imogen's sad little apostrophes to a lost career sound more like excuses than regrets.
As a character, Imogen invites admiration but generates pity, if not contempt. Why must Imogen Quy exist on the margins of other people's lives as confidant, observer, dispenser of comforting advice and flu remedies? If she were decades older or if the novel were set decades ago, this would be more acceptable, or, at least, less unacceptable. Walsh is perhaps letting the pre-WWII settings of her Sayers novels cast a shadow over this present-tense story. Imogen's nosiness - which verges on the pathological here - is insufficiently explained. She pursues people she barely knows (the similarly named Rowena and Fiona,) well past the boundaries of decent manners, while her near-obsession with the murder is only one small step away from inexplicable. Well, perhaps she, too, is bored. That wouldn't be surprising, since Imogen's life is a cultural wasteland. In her day-to-day life in Cambridge, she never goes to a play or concert, reads a book, or steps into a museum. Her mind inquires only after other people's business. Yes, she can play quotation games, but - as pleasant as those brief passages are to read - that, too, verges on the unbelievable, as Imogene's life of the mind seems to be limited to the quotidian doings of those around her, not the intellectual activities of anyone, present or past. A more pertinent question than "who dunnit?" is where did Imo learn to quote Auden - even Auden? If Walsh wants the sort of reader who likes quotation games, shouldn't she play fair and give us a character who reads?
This book is probably better than the one star I'm giving it. Mark that down to near-bitter disappointment. It's hard not to feel betrayed by an author who loves Harriet Vane and pens Imogen Quy.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well-crafted, yet lacking, January 17, 2011
On the plus side, Debts of Dishonor is well-researched; incorporating the stock market, high finance, outsourcing and the financial pickle a lot of institutions find themselves in these days. It's excellently crafted, with subtle clues and red herrings planted along the way for the reader to remember once the solution is revealed.
On the minus side, it's peculiarly passionless. Imogen Quy shows up everywhere, somehow inspiring highly personal confidences from everyone she meets and included in top level pow-wows, but the reader is left asking, "Why?" Kind and generous with her time she may be, but CEOs of multi-national companies asking for her advice strains credibility a bit. Imogen's willingness to befriend the new lover(s) of a former flame, not to mention being available at all hours of the day and night to rush to the former flame's assistance further takes this from realistic to just plain "Huh?" territory.
Jill Paton Walsh's ability to craft a plot is superb; creating appealing characters, not so much. The plot drives the novel, and if the characters had lived up to the story, this would have been a good one indeed.
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