Love lost

To Darkness and to Death

In my review of #2 in the Rev. Claire Ferguson and Ross Van Alstyne Mysteries, I reported that I was in love with the series and wouldn't be able to discuss it critically. Here and now I announce:
I have fallen out of love.

I thought the whole point of a mystery, as opposed to a thriller or a plain old book, was the mystery. The puzzle; the discovery; the slow unraveling of clues, means and motives. As Dorothy Sayers once wrote, crime in the purely intellectual sense. In my idea of a mystery, the actual dirty deeds occur in the past or offstage; the plot concentrates on the detective and the detection process. There's not much mystery when you know exactly what happened.

So you can imagine my disappointment at having to suffer through chapter after chapter in the minds of the killer and his victims, feeling real-time the pain and suffering and stupid decisions they make. I know life is tough. I know good people do bad things, often for totally inadequate reasons. I know anger, pain, and frustration.

But I don't want to read about it. I don't mind experiencing peoples' emotion, but I don't want to be dragged through the mud with them.  Bleah!