Great Black Kanba [Paperback]

Constance Little (Author), Gwenyth Little (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: Rue Morgue (August 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0915230224
• ISBN-13: 978-0915230228
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,904,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Delightful, Fun Mystery, December 8, 2000

By 

seventeen degrees - See all my reviews

This review is from: Great Black Kanba (Paperback)

An American woman wakes up on an Australian train and has no memory of who she is or where she's going. Her traveling partner has disappeared, leaving behind a scant few items she claimed belong to her memory-challenged friend. She doubts her departed pal's veracity -- her taste in clothes couldn't really be this bad, could it? At the next stop, she is joined by a multitude of possible relatives (they didn't know what she would look like, and she hesitates to tell them what's going on until she can try to figure out her identity). These eccentric relatives, along with a couple of men who claim they're engaged to her, join our amnesiac protaganist for the remainder of the long train voyage across Australia. She doesn't know who to trust, particularly after a new (old?) friend (rival?) is murdered. She does get to leave the train, but only to keep changing trains.

I loved this book. It's entertaining, clever, and a very quick read. There's lots going on, and wackiness abounds. I loved this book, and look forward to reading all the Little sisters' books I can get my hands on. Rue Morgue calls the sisters "the reigning queens of the cozy screwball mystery from the 1930s to the 1950s." The nifty introduction reveals that they did all their writing in bed ("Chairs give one backaches" said Gwenyth), adding to and rewriting sections and sending them back and forth. They wrote 21 stand-alone comic mysteries, all but one with the word "Black" in the title.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Good Black Kanba, November 29, 2010

By 

Audrey Homan "Yup." (VT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Great Black Kanba (Paperback)

Plucky amnesiac heroine awakens on a train in Australia, surrounded by a family of mad Australians, apparently related to her. And some corpses and a nice handsome doctor.

Anyway. Most of the Little sisters books follow the same basic plan: plucky single-girl heroine becomes embroiled in a murder and finds herself wooed by both a handsome but plainspoken and saturnine anti-hero and a slightly better-looking but glib hero who just happens to leave a mysterious trail of slime wherever he goes. Indubitably, the gentle reader will discover that the hero is in fact a garden-variety cad or bounder, and the saturnine anti-hero will have not a heart of gold but a firm hand and a quick wit, and hence is suitable to marry.

Paragons of feminist theory these stories are not, but they do happen to be fun reading. They are, as advertised, madcap and screwball, with witty, zingy dialogue and interesting characters. Sadly, this is not one of their better entries. Despite the exotic locale and the interesting premise, about halfway through, the plot falls apart completely, ending in a manner that feels rushed and slapdash. It lacks, for instance, the depth and zing of The Black Stocking, but that book after all, was set in a madhouse, and featured a headless, wandering corpse. That's a tough act to follow.

So it was a nice read, and a decent one, with some fantastic one-liners ("You Americans are born restless," said Clive. "I don't know how you stand going to bed at night and just lying there until morning."). It's well written, with a mellifluous rhythm and nice characterization. If you don't squint too closely at the plot, you'll be fine.