Customer Reviews

Ten Lords A-Leaping

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

 

 

As an American who spends a frightful amount of time in the UK, I found this book to be hilarious, but then I am familiar with a lot of how the UK works. For this series, it probably helps although it isn't absolutely essential. If you watch a lot of Mystery or read a lot, then you'll get by fine.

This book is dry British humor. It holds no sacred cows in fact she targets and sends up sacred cows in her books. She also has a cat character, Plutarch, who is one of the funnier cats in writing without that nauseating cloyness that many authors give pets. Then again, that's probably part of the humor.

If you like dry humor, if you appreciate poking fun at most everything, if you like intelligent slapstick (do you like Mr. Bean?) then you will probably appreciate the humor here. It also helps if you understand and appreciate irony. Otherwise, much of this may either bewilder or bore you. If you're a bit prudish this probably isn't your cup of tea either.

One other thing - the mystery here is just a vehicle for a hilarious story. If you want mysteries to be the key, this will probably irritate you too. I wasn't particularly worried about the solution as I was enjoying the caper far more, but I knew what I was in for.

For the first half of this book, I enjoyed the author's wit and storytelling quite a bit. Any writer who has the courage to expose the anthropomorphic absurdities of the animal rights movement has my eager attention. But the second half of the book didn't quite work for me. It seemed like scene after scene of characters discussing the situation rather than anything really taking place. After the twentieth phone conversation between two characters telling each other what they'd found out or arranging meetings over dinner, I began to get a little impatient. Indeed, the most action-packed scene in the second half of the book involves retrieving an escaped cat. By the time I got to the solution of the mystery--which seemed to come out of nowhere and had little to do with the theme of the book--I really didn't care that much anymore. I appreciate the author's willingness to satirize so many political points of view--on both sides of the pond--and Baroness Troutbeck was a hoot, but I would have liked a little less conversation and a little more action.

For us American types who know next to nothing about the British House of Lords, this was an instructive book. But that's not it's real purpose, of course, since it is after all a murder mystery. Baroness Jack Troutbeck, newly elevated to that title, is now in the Lords and consequently her sidekick Robert Amiss gets to investigate a murder there. One is generally less interested in the mystery in a Ruth Dudley Edwards book than enjoying the comic twists in the plot line and laughing at the even quirkier characters, and both abound in this tale.

Like the previous reviewer, I believe the ending is rather contrived and it does break one of the cardinal rules of mysterydom, which is that there should be enough clues along the way to give away the identity of the murderer to a careful reader. But since this is a comic mystery that is a bit less of a crime, if you'll pardon the pun.

I did not enjoy this one as much as some other Dudley Edwards mysteries, but it did keep me entertained and surely that counts for a lot. One point: someone needs to tell the writer that the state of Virginia is not in the American midwest.

Ruth Dudley Edwards is my favorite mystery author. Her books are always intelligent and funny. I wish she'd write more!

I enjoyed this British mystery, which centers largely around Parliament's House of Lords. That was interesting, since I know nothing at all about how it works or waht they do there. The plot was pretty good too, although the ending didn't really wrap everything up the way I expected and there was no real climax to speak of.

My main complaint was the characters. I didn't really like anyone in the book, except perhaps for the policeman assigned to solve the case. The book centers around a woman, "Jack" Troutbeck, who is elevated to a peeress. She immediately jumps into controversy by supporting the traditional English hunt, which animal rights activists are trying to outlaw. She ropes in a reluctant friend to help on her campaign, Robert Amiss. Although he's out of work and in India looking for a new job, he drops everything to come help her out. Soon the action picks up, with a terrorist attack in Parliament and peers dropping like flies.

Jack is abrasive and coarse. She's independent enough, and occasionally funny, but not often enough that I could really stand her very long. Amiss comes off as a wimp (he admits it himself several times during the book) and I wondered why he would even stick around since Jack took him for granted during the entire book.

I was not impressed at all by the characters and I sure won't be reading another one of these books.