Funeral Music by Morag Joss is an example of the sub-genre of mysteries where a crime is solved not by a cop or a detective, but rather, by an amateur who has nothing to do with such things by profession. Or in this case, interest: in fact, the heroine du jour, Sara Selkirk, is a concert cellist. That's what drew me to this book in the first place, thinking that I like cello music and I like mysteries, so how can I go wrong?
Wishful thinking, unfortunately. You know that Point of View panel I posted about at Writer's Weekend, the one that opined that a book should stay away from head-hopping? This book does that. It's only a little scattered at first, generally good about having hard scene breaks before jumping into somebody else's head, and with only occasional bits where this is broken. But towards the end, where the heroine comes extremely close to getting offed by the killer, we suddenly get a scene where the POV jumps back and forth between heroine and killer with every paragraph.
Part of me can see why the author wrote it this way: it does lend the scene a certain immediacy that you wouldn't get if you had only the heroine's POV and then the killer's, or vice versa. But because the heroine never knows that the killer is there, and because each paragraph winds up being a dump of the characters' inner thoughts without making them really interact, it really wound up reading exactly like a MUSH roleplay log. A pretty well written one, mind you, but a roleplay log nonetheless. And that really kind of took me out of the story.
The second beef I have with the book is purely a matter of personal taste rather than any fault of the writing, but it's one that took enjoyment out of it for me anyway: to wit, the heroine has a growing relationship with a man who's already married and who has children. This is certainly plausible in this day and age, and I will grant that Joss does not shirk from awareness that this will have its consequences if it is allowed to continue. But for me, anyway, it's just not fun to read about that. I went through enough of that growing up that I prefer to avoid it in my reading.
Last but not least, I have an issue with the heroine Sara falling apart and turning into a big blubbering mess in the climactic scene where she confronts one of the people responsible for the first death in the book. She has a very,very good reason to wig out--the other party is threatening to sever the tendons of her right hand and ruin her ability to play ever again, which I absolutely buy as terrifying for a musician. Yet it was grating to see Sara do nothing but freeze up and whine, and furthermore have to be rescued from the situation by the Big Strong Man.
Overall, aside from the head-hopping thing, I did kind of like the writing. Joss has a decent command of the language and filled in some nice little nuances in her characters. Problem was, I just didn't like most of those people very much, and was therefore ultimately unsatisfied by the story. Two and a half stars.
Wishful thinking, unfortunately. You know that Point of View panel I posted about at Writer's Weekend, the one that opined that a book should stay away from head-hopping? This book does that. It's only a little scattered at first, generally good about having hard scene breaks before jumping into somebody else's head, and with only occasional bits where this is broken. But towards the end, where the heroine comes extremely close to getting offed by the killer, we suddenly get a scene where the POV jumps back and forth between heroine and killer with every paragraph.
Part of me can see why the author wrote it this way: it does lend the scene a certain immediacy that you wouldn't get if you had only the heroine's POV and then the killer's, or vice versa. But because the heroine never knows that the killer is there, and because each paragraph winds up being a dump of the characters' inner thoughts without making them really interact, it really wound up reading exactly like a MUSH roleplay log. A pretty well written one, mind you, but a roleplay log nonetheless. And that really kind of took me out of the story.
The second beef I have with the book is purely a matter of personal taste rather than any fault of the writing, but it's one that took enjoyment out of it for me anyway: to wit, the heroine has a growing relationship with a man who's already married and who has children. This is certainly plausible in this day and age, and I will grant that Joss does not shirk from awareness that this will have its consequences if it is allowed to continue. But for me, anyway, it's just not fun to read about that. I went through enough of that growing up that I prefer to avoid it in my reading.
Last but not least, I have an issue with the heroine Sara falling apart and turning into a big blubbering mess in the climactic scene where she confronts one of the people responsible for the first death in the book. She has a very,very good reason to wig out--the other party is threatening to sever the tendons of her right hand and ruin her ability to play ever again, which I absolutely buy as terrifying for a musician. Yet it was grating to see Sara do nothing but freeze up and whine, and furthermore have to be rescued from the situation by the Big Strong Man.
Overall, aside from the head-hopping thing, I did kind of like the writing. Joss has a decent command of the language and filled in some nice little nuances in her characters. Problem was, I just didn't like most of those people very much, and was therefore ultimately unsatisfied by the story. Two and a half stars.
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