Murder on Embassy Row [Paperback]

Margaret Truman (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Fawcett Crest; 14th printing edition (1990)
• ASIN: B001263NIM
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Getting Better, September 27, 2000

By 

richard_t "richard_t" (Overseas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder on Embassy Row (Capital Crime Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Margaret Truman is getting better with each book. Here she's gone beyond the limiting format (that was getting annoying in her previous books) of having a tough-as-nails but cuddly-as-a-kitten heroine solve the crimes. The plotting in "Embassy Row" is much more carefully crafted, as British Ambassador Geoffrey James dies after his own party under mysterious circumstances. This is the first of Truman's books where you won't have guessed the villain by about 50 pages in. The characters are a bit better, but Truman's efforts at cop-talk and cop-walk still fall woefully short. Hero Sal Morizio makes lots of dumb naive mistakes for a veteran big city detective. He's the least credible of all the characters. Truman also plays some of the same riffs as in her previous books: she spends a lot of time describing D.C. cafes and restaurants, but is woefully uninformed about how government offices actually operate. For example, there is no "British Liaison office at the State Department", and CIA isn't called "the Company" by anyone but callow writers. But the very worst and most annoying mistake in the book is Truman's repeated and insistent assertion that Iranians are Arabs. They aren't, they're Muslim but not Arab.

Overall, "Embassy Row" is better than "Supreme Court" or "White House", but there's still lots of room for improvement.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing to the mystery lover., June 17, 2000

By 

Elsie Wilson (Aberystwyth, Cymru) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder on Embassy Row (Capital Crime Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

What is it about the British that has so soured Truman? I have not read a book by her in which any of the British characters were nice. Here the prime nasties are all British, from the murder victim ~ the Ambassador ~ to the planner and executer of the cover-up and the people who end up giving our protagonist clues. The only Britons of any attraction are incidentals who wander in and out of the book in a page or two. Sadly, this is not my only complaint about the book: I don't like Truman's insistance on some details ~ locations, specific stores, clothing ~ which she uses to establish her credibility. Nor has she invented an even plausible plot ~ the British Ambassador to Iran knew weeks beforehand about the Ayatollah's takeover in '79, including the plan to capture the American embassy, and the only use he made of the information was to plan a smuggling operation? Please. Stick to biography.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Murder on Embassy Row, January 5, 2007

By 

Carole J. Lemmer "READING HOUND" (OZARKS) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder on Embassy Row (Capital Crime Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

I love the venue of M. Truman's mysteries. She a first rate writer. The many twists held my interest until it ended.