Saturday, September 28, 2013

2013 book 251

Laurie R. King's The Bones of Paris
After not really being into the last couple of King's Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell books, I was excited to read something entirely different from her. This new mystery involves an American PI in France in 1929, trying to find a missing girl, and hobnobbing with the usual notable names of the day (Hemingway, Man Ray, etc. There is a weird amount of Gertrude Stein dissing, too). Things only get more complicated when he encounters a woman from his past. The central story is pretty solid, and the seamy dark side of the Parisian art world is kind of fascinating, but everything just moved SO SLOWLY. The descriptions of various weird Surrealist theater pieces and otherwise creepy artworks could have been cut waaaaay down, and in general a lot of this could have been edited out for a more streamlined mystery. I think King is going for a more literary mystery thing here, but I found a lot of the descriptions tedious. On the plus side, there's a character who's basically the human equivalent of Lying Cat from Saga! B.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book is available now.

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