Customer Reviews

Murdering Americans (Baroness Jack Troutbeck)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The Amiss series began most amusingly, with well-aimed and appropriate digs at political correctness run amok. Baroness Jack Troutbeck, free thinking, cigar chomping, bisexual academic, used to be good for enormous laughs at the expense of stuffed shirts and PC police. There were actual mysteries to solve, whether in the offices of Whitehall, the editorial room of a magazine clearly meant to be The Spectator, the dean's office of a cathedral, or campus of an all-women's college at Oxford. But with each book in the series, the level of mystery and plot diminishes and the level of diatribe increases. Carnage on the Committee, about the machinations that go on behind the scenes for a literary prize, is already losing the balance into editorializing. Murdering Americans seems to be nine-tenths banal diatribe about political correctness on US campuses (and bad food, and dumbing down of education, etc. etc) and only one-tenth mystery and amusement. Get a grip, Miss Dudley Edwards. We get it. Now tell us a story.

Worst mystery without a mystery ever read. Author tries to be cute about the American culture yet she sounds like she has no knowledge except from some English newspaper headlines. Characters are superficial & talky but don't say anything. Did not build - was strung out at the end - just skim the last few chapters to get the idea.

I guess I just wasn't into it. I was unable to finish this book, even though I am a voracious reader. Maybe it was just my wounded sensibilities as an American who feels deeply the pain of the last 7 years, but I just didn't like the continuing jabs at the "PCness" that we, as a nation, have adopted. In these times being politically correct may be all we have left of our integrity. It is a dubious way of exhibiting our shrinking humanity, I admit. In any case, I just can't recommend this book as a thrilling or suspenseful mystery. The author seems more bent on pitilessly, inexpertly, and I might add, incompetently, exposing human weaknesses than engaging the reader in a whodunit.

The Mistress of St. Martha's College in Cambridge, England, Professor Baroness "Jack" Troutbeck accepts an invitation to become a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Freeman State University in New Paddington, Indiana. Leaving behind the House of Lords, Jack, accompanied only by her loquacious (some might say loud mouth - just not in front of Jack) right wing spouting Horace the parrot, expects hotbeds of philosophical debate as seen by 1950s classic movies.

Instead Jack is appalled by what she finds in Indiana; and not just the prison food and chlorine water. The campus is owned by the liberal leaning politically correct police called Freeman State University academia who dumb down debate and threaten the essence of civilization dating back to Ancient Athens as no group has ever challenged it before. Ready to wrestle these miscreants into submission, the outraged outrageous right winger begins to make quiet inquiries into the death of the Provost Helen Fortier Pritchardson even as the Baroness struggles with the Americanization of thought starting with Randy the waiter and ending with an amalgam of anti alliterations.

Ruth Dudley Edwards provides a take no prisoner satire that rips into the phoniness of political correctness and the perhaps even more phony anti-political correctness by the use of hyperbole and character comparisons. The whodunit is cleverly designed to support the Baroness' foray into life in the proper American Midwest. Lampooning liberals and stinging anti-liberals, Ms. Edwards writes an amusing tale in which the assimilated Americans don't know Jack even after the third war with the Brits ends.

Harriet Klausner

Ruth Dudley Edwards mystery series has been great entertainment - until now. Each of her novels focuses on a 'hot topic", the House of Lords, Irish radicals, the church, literary pomposity, which her hilarious character Jack Troutbeck then skewers. (You don't have to agree with Baroness Troutbeck, but she will make you laugh!) This novel, however, is so disappointing. It's a rant on political correctness rather than a good story and, for most of the book, many of Edwards' delightful series characters are missing!

I liked this more than a bit. If you know anything about higher education's inner workings in the U.S., you'll acknowledge the "over the top" PC correctness and neuroses perpetuated by faculty and administrators in this gem of a mystery. Loosely based on the author's exposure to a midwestern university, the Baroness and her crew have the luxury of nothing to lose when busting criminals and hypocrisy. This is a humorous mystery with underlying serious issues and murder.

Overall, I had to stop reading at page 42. There was just too much ranting, rabid hatred of America. When I pick up a mystery, I want to read about a mystery. Not an author's bubbling resentment.

Here is the first part of the dedication.

"To Mairin, who has been so horrified by what she has learned from this book that she hates it even more than she hates America."

A dedication is in an author's voice, and this dedication tells of this particular author's biases. The tone it sets is far from humorous, and it continues in the story itself:

"'Yanks are thundering snobs.'"

"'...told me my trouble was I had rotted my brain reading innumerable crap novels for my course on modern American fiction,....'"

"'...because, of course, like most Americans, she thinks she lives in the only land of opportunity ever invented in the history of the universe.'"

"'What I can't understand... is how there are so many fat people in America when the food is too horrible to eat.'"

"'...we [the English] don't do fat like Americans do fat. Americans do fat on a grand, grand Rocky Mountains scale.... And, incidentally, our food is vastly superior.'"

"'But we can't like <sic> all be students in Cambridge...we're only like <sic> ordinary American students. We don't expect like <sic> historic buildings, just places that'll help us get the degrees we like <sic> need.'"

This is just a small selection. Out of the first 42 pages. And nary a mystery in site. Just ranting.

I have loved every Edwards book up to this one, after reading several at the library I bought a copy of each of her Amiss/Troutbeck series. Perhaps a writer can't satirize something they don't know truly well. Miss Edwards uses a sledgehammer. She came in with an agenda. This book makes me wonder about her previous ones, am I so unknowledgable about England that I didn't recognize her writing as hamfisted? Find me a student or student's wife in a Burkka in any university in the U.S. as Miss Edwards does. I won't go through the errors in history,logic,and plain commonsense but even a liberal might know what tweed is and Americans don't use the word "frock".

Reviewed by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views (2/07)

"Murdering Americans" is another book in a series of adventures for Baroness Jack Troutbeck. In this one, the Baroness takes a break from being Mistress of St. Martha's College, with her feisty parrot Horace, to be a Distinguished Visiting Professor (DVP) at a college in Indiana. When she gets to the college she discovers that some of her not-so-favorite people are also DVP's there. She also realizes that she cannot stand mid-western American cuisine and that the liberal American world of academia is not for her. She speaks out about this. Actually, the Baroness' thoughts on how overboard our society has become with political correctness are quite valid and enjoyable to read.

There is a faction of students on campus, who are fed up with the administrators and the way that the college is being handled. The Baroness learns about what is happening and becomes very outspoken with her thoughts. She also discovers that it appears that a former administrator was actually murdered prior to her arrival. When other administrators are killed, the tension heats up on campus. The Baroness has to convince her sidekick, Robert Amiss, to leave his European honeymoon and come to her aide.

"Murdering Americans" is a fun book to read. The characters are well-developed and most of them would truly be referred to as "Characters." In spite of the humor, the plot is also suspenseful. This is the first book that I have read in this series. You can read it, without having had to read the other ones first. However, I enjoyed it so much, I plan on going back to read the other ones in the series.

Received book free of charge.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!~ It is the work of a deluded, self-hating, anti-American old british battleax (SHE IS NOT IRISH) who has not written a true word in her entire life. This book is a complete and total waste of time and money with absolutely no redeeming value at all. If you purchase it, don't forget that I told you so! TRASH