A review by nicolepeck
Murder on Embassy Row by Margaret Truman

3.0

I've read one or two previous books by this author/in this series before (I think it was the Smithsonian one; I was a teenager, I can't remember! ha ha!!) and remembered enjoying it. This one was just okay for me. I liked that the action (what there was of it; it moved pretty slowly, IMO) traveled to London and Copenhagen; I enjoyed the descriptions of the settings in those two places. I also enjoyed the descriptions of DC. It appears that each book in the series deals with a new set of characters; it's really just the setting of the Nation's Capital that stays the same. In this book, the characters trying to solve the murders are two police officers, involved in a romantic relationship outside of work. There's enough background given of the history of their relationship and bits of romance thrown in so I felt I got to know them well. The book just lacked a lot of action for me for a police-driven murder mystery. It would start to and then never build up enough, it would just slow down again almost immediately. And then the ending was just abrupt with an unsatisfactory (for me) ending that's left slightly hanging, almost like the author just wanted to finish with a little epilogue tacked on, with no resolution of what happened to a few of the bad guys that the author made sure to point out leading up to the end were bad guys. With the ending, I understand why she didn't have any sort of penance for those behind the murders, but the rest of the people involved we get no information on. Still sitting here scratching my head over the ending of this one.

Content: Clean, no strong language

Once Upon a Book Club Box 40 Books in 2021 Reading Challenge tag: Published When You were 10 Years Old