Customer Reviews

Killing Me Softly

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"Killing me Softly" is a so-so mystery in the Inspector Gil Mayo's series. This time around Gil Mayo's own role is very small, and Abigail Moon is the detective inspector who works the case--the murder of a philandering local Lavenstock man who had iffy business dealings. Of course, as always, there are additional plotlines that may or may not intersect with this murder.

While the plot in this book is mostly engaging, it is not well organized. Eccles chooses to tell the story through too many characters' actions in too many small sections, with some characters having such small parts that it is questionable if they are needed at all to make the plot work. The result is a scatteredness that detracts from the mystery.

As usual, Eccles does a better job of filling out the characters for her plot than those of the recurring protagonists Mayo and Moon and cohorts. In this book the reader is privy to more of Abigail Moon's personal life and thoughts, but she is far from a riveting character. A serious personal incident in Mayo's life is presented in a couple of paragraphs, which seems an odd choice for the main character in a series. The more Moon takes over as the main character the more the quality of the series drops off. It would be interesting to know why Eccles, unlike so many other authors of mystery series, chooses to make her star characters flat and their personal lives extraneous.

Still, Eccles is a good writer. Her books are generally very readable, so I mostly enjoyed this book despite its flaws. After all, once I start a series, I want to find out what happens to the characters through to the final book.