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Beach Reading
Aug. 17th, 2008 03:11 pmWe took a morning trip down to Harkness Park today, where Elizabeth played in the wet sand, and the dry sand, and any other sand she could find. She contrived by way of suntan lotion adherence and clothing folds to bring 22.8Kg of sand home with us as well, but that pales before the damage of a small girl eating rapidly melting chocolate ice cream with limited spoon control in a moving car.
Bathtime just finished, so she's no longer a superfund site.
Anyway, I finished Colin Cotterill's The Coroner's Lunch today, and it was very, very good. Fun and funny, with engaging characters and a nice mystery. Better still, it's the start of a theme series where it really looks like the author knows what he's talking about. I've been most put out with my forays into this sort of detective fiction because they've been so bad - the author doesn't sound like they really know anything about the theme setting - where it being in Rome or 1700's London or Pemberly are just a distinguishing characteristic of the series - or if they do they know the subject matter they don't know how to plot mysteries or write engaging characters (Ms Greenlaw, I'm looking at you..., but even the authors of the above mentioned series are pretty sketchy in the skill department). Iain Pears' Art History Mysteries have been a happy exception to this trend, with pears being a skilled writer and subject matter expert. Cotterill spent years living in and over a hospital in Laos just after the communists took over, and his portrayal of this setting just sings with authenticity.
Cotterill's books are a little odd as they have elements of the supernatural (Dr. Siri dreams about the spirits of the recently departed) along with the scientific aspects of forensic pathology. I'd prefer it if his dreams were explained by his intuition, but they're not - it is explicitly magical, but the author is up front with it and doesn't use it to solve every mystery, so there are legitimate challenges to the reader.
Bathtime just finished, so she's no longer a superfund site.
Anyway, I finished Colin Cotterill's The Coroner's Lunch today, and it was very, very good. Fun and funny, with engaging characters and a nice mystery. Better still, it's the start of a theme series where it really looks like the author knows what he's talking about. I've been most put out with my forays into this sort of detective fiction because they've been so bad - the author doesn't sound like they really know anything about the theme setting - where it being in Rome or 1700's London or Pemberly are just a distinguishing characteristic of the series - or if they do they know the subject matter they don't know how to plot mysteries or write engaging characters (Ms Greenlaw, I'm looking at you..., but even the authors of the above mentioned series are pretty sketchy in the skill department). Iain Pears' Art History Mysteries have been a happy exception to this trend, with pears being a skilled writer and subject matter expert. Cotterill spent years living in and over a hospital in Laos just after the communists took over, and his portrayal of this setting just sings with authenticity.
Cotterill's books are a little odd as they have elements of the supernatural (Dr. Siri dreams about the spirits of the recently departed) along with the scientific aspects of forensic pathology. I'd prefer it if his dreams were explained by his intuition, but they're not - it is explicitly magical, but the author is up front with it and doesn't use it to solve every mystery, so there are legitimate challenges to the reader.
