Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I feel like it should have. I don’t know if it was Covid or just a nasty something, but my hubby and I have been sick all week, as have (to a lesser degree) my 15- and 9-year-olds. I’m feeling close to better at this point, but you can still hear the lingering effects in my voice and the occasional cough. (I’m using that as an excuse for missing Wednesday, by the way.) As a result, our activities have been somewhat curtailed this week.

This morning, however, we thoroughly cleaned and vacuumed the living room, which is why my littles are downstairs taking turns playing Minecraft at the moment, my big girls are sorting clothes and watching “Psych” in the living room, and I’m taking the opportunity to review Anne Perry’s The Cater Street Hangman, which I finished listening to last night. (We actually inherited a mass market copy from Dieter, which is why I was listening to it in the first place.) Here goes, then…

First of all–and Britt, who’s read several more books in this series, assures me this isn’t an isolated incident–there is NO falling action here; you find out the killer’s identity in the last three pages, and the scene in which you find out is the final scene. (I’m apparently too big a fan of more than superficial closure to enjoy that style, but you do you.) Secondly, the book dragged a bit for me. Tension, unease, and unravelling relationships seem to be its primary focus, and yet the relationship that is supposed to be, um, ravelled doesn’t really develop at all. It just sort of–jumps. I imagine part of the problem is first-book-in-the-series syndrome–it’s working on setting the stage–but it still left me wanting more. I suppose if you want a psychological family drama that ends with the unveiling of a murderer, have at this one; for me, I’d rather have watched it on tv and had it take no longer than an hour and a half.