Book 38, 2015
Jun. 13th, 2015 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chez_jaeI brought my work book home to finish this weekend. I didn't want to suffer any longer than I had to. The book was Missing Marlene by Evan Marshall. Apparently, it is the first in his "Partners in Crime" mystery series, featuring literary agent Jane Stuart. From the author bio, I learned Marshall is/was also a literary agent. One would suppose he could recognize dreck when he reads it, so it baffles me that he wrote it.
This book was one big eye-roll from start to finish.
To begin with, the "partner" in the "Partners in Crime" duo is meant to be Jane's cat Winky. However, not only was Winky not Jane's cat (she belonged to Jane's son, Nick), but Winky did not feature very heavily in the story. At all. It was as if the author saw cat cozies were the new big thing in books (the book was written in 1999) and decided to write a cat cozy of his own. News flash! Cat cozies should, you know, involve the cat(s).
Second, the main character, Jane, was very two-dimensional. I never felt connected to her, engaged with her, nor overly sympathetic. In addition, many characters introduced in the book disliked Jane, which led me to believe she was not a likable person. Jane is a young widow with a young son, whom she hires a nanny to care for while she's working. The premise of the story is that Jane's nanny, Marlene, has disappeared, and the entirety of the book follows Jane as she investigates to find out what happened.
...which brings me to my next point. So, your 19 year-old nanny cleans out her things and disappears. Marlene was the daughter of Jane's supposed bff, which is the only reason Jane hired her. She never much cared for Marlene, and it turns out the feeling was mutual. So, in this instance, one would think Jane would call her friend Ivy to inform her that her daughter up and left her high and dry, and then wash her hands of the mess. But no! Jane feels obligated to look into Marlene's disappearance, to the point of endangering herself by visiting a dive bar where Marlene hung out, and confronting Marlene's volatile former boyfriend. Why?! Why would you go to such lengths? It made no sense.
Oh, and when Jane finally went to the police to report that Marlene had disappeared and no one seemed to know where she was, the officer in charge actually said to her, "You should follow every lead you've got. Keep us posted on anything that might help us."
Er, what?! Since when do the police tell a civilian to follow leads?! Mind-boggling.
During the course of Jane's investigating, the author seemed to feel the need to describe where she was driving, such as 'Jane turned left on Main Street, drove two blocks and took a right on Electric Avenue...' Who cares? I found it annoying, more than anything.
Throughout the book, we still don't know if Marlene is dead or alive. I mean, as a reader, you can surmise she's dead, but Jane sure put a lot of work into tracking down an adult, and for what? Because her mother, Ivy, couldn't be arsed to do it? Ivy actually gave Jane the phone number for Marlene's bff Zena, and told Jane to call her to see if Zena may know where Marlene went. Excuse me? This is YOUR daughter who's missing, and YOU can't be bothered to call her friend yourself?
The narration of the book followed Jane 95% of the time, with a few excursions to doodle off and follow another character, and I saw no real reason for that, either. All it accomplished was to annoy me and reinforce the fact that poor Jane has no one who will truly stand beside her. It seemed everyone had it in for Jane, from her self-serving lover to a rival literary agent. I don't know if the author wanted to the reader to feel sorry for Jane, or not. Often, Jane would bemoan her lack of progress with the case of the missing nanny, or feel overwhelmed with running her own agency, and she would fret and wonder what her late husband would have done. It was like "WWKD"...as in, What Would Kenneth Do? Kenneth isn't there, so get a grip, bitch!
The author threw too many red herrings into the mix, just to keep 'em guessing, I'm guessing. That was confusing, confounding and unnecessary. I figured out who dunnit, anyway. Neener, neener. I even knew where Marlene would eventually be found. SPOILER ALERT: she was dead, of course, but the motive for murder was wishy-washy at best, and, what one reviewer (on the back cover) described as "a dandy twist at the end" was a moment of complete WTF-ery. But, good ol' Jane had that figured out, too, never mind that she just now discovered the dead body.
In short, I didn't like the story. I didn't like the characters or the plot, and the narrative was hum-drum. The book had two redeeming features:
1. A cat
2. This quote: "Money is nice...if you don't have to pay too high a price for it."
I'm giving this one two stars:
★★
This book was one big eye-roll from start to finish.
To begin with, the "partner" in the "Partners in Crime" duo is meant to be Jane's cat Winky. However, not only was Winky not Jane's cat (she belonged to Jane's son, Nick), but Winky did not feature very heavily in the story. At all. It was as if the author saw cat cozies were the new big thing in books (the book was written in 1999) and decided to write a cat cozy of his own. News flash! Cat cozies should, you know, involve the cat(s).
Second, the main character, Jane, was very two-dimensional. I never felt connected to her, engaged with her, nor overly sympathetic. In addition, many characters introduced in the book disliked Jane, which led me to believe she was not a likable person. Jane is a young widow with a young son, whom she hires a nanny to care for while she's working. The premise of the story is that Jane's nanny, Marlene, has disappeared, and the entirety of the book follows Jane as she investigates to find out what happened.
...which brings me to my next point. So, your 19 year-old nanny cleans out her things and disappears. Marlene was the daughter of Jane's supposed bff, which is the only reason Jane hired her. She never much cared for Marlene, and it turns out the feeling was mutual. So, in this instance, one would think Jane would call her friend Ivy to inform her that her daughter up and left her high and dry, and then wash her hands of the mess. But no! Jane feels obligated to look into Marlene's disappearance, to the point of endangering herself by visiting a dive bar where Marlene hung out, and confronting Marlene's volatile former boyfriend. Why?! Why would you go to such lengths? It made no sense.
Oh, and when Jane finally went to the police to report that Marlene had disappeared and no one seemed to know where she was, the officer in charge actually said to her, "You should follow every lead you've got. Keep us posted on anything that might help us."
Er, what?! Since when do the police tell a civilian to follow leads?! Mind-boggling.
During the course of Jane's investigating, the author seemed to feel the need to describe where she was driving, such as 'Jane turned left on Main Street, drove two blocks and took a right on Electric Avenue...' Who cares? I found it annoying, more than anything.
Throughout the book, we still don't know if Marlene is dead or alive. I mean, as a reader, you can surmise she's dead, but Jane sure put a lot of work into tracking down an adult, and for what? Because her mother, Ivy, couldn't be arsed to do it? Ivy actually gave Jane the phone number for Marlene's bff Zena, and told Jane to call her to see if Zena may know where Marlene went. Excuse me? This is YOUR daughter who's missing, and YOU can't be bothered to call her friend yourself?
The narration of the book followed Jane 95% of the time, with a few excursions to doodle off and follow another character, and I saw no real reason for that, either. All it accomplished was to annoy me and reinforce the fact that poor Jane has no one who will truly stand beside her. It seemed everyone had it in for Jane, from her self-serving lover to a rival literary agent. I don't know if the author wanted to the reader to feel sorry for Jane, or not. Often, Jane would bemoan her lack of progress with the case of the missing nanny, or feel overwhelmed with running her own agency, and she would fret and wonder what her late husband would have done. It was like "WWKD"...as in, What Would Kenneth Do? Kenneth isn't there, so get a grip, bitch!
The author threw too many red herrings into the mix, just to keep 'em guessing, I'm guessing. That was confusing, confounding and unnecessary. I figured out who dunnit, anyway. Neener, neener. I even knew where Marlene would eventually be found. SPOILER ALERT: she was dead, of course, but the motive for murder was wishy-washy at best, and, what one reviewer (on the back cover) described as "a dandy twist at the end" was a moment of complete WTF-ery. But, good ol' Jane had that figured out, too, never mind that she just now discovered the dead body.
In short, I didn't like the story. I didn't like the characters or the plot, and the narrative was hum-drum. The book had two redeeming features:
1. A cat
2. This quote: "Money is nice...if you don't have to pay too high a price for it."
I'm giving this one two stars:
★★
