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A review by omegabeth
A Man of Some Repute by Elizabeth Edmondson
4.0
I was looking tp expand my cozy mystery habit—no suspense, horror, or on-stage violence, please, as this is supposed to be an escape from reality, not a reminder of it! My normal fodder is somewhat silly and formulaic, but as I’ve been having a grand time with Daisy Dalrymple, Mrs. Jeffries, and Phryne Fisher, I was digging around for something else in that vein.
This turns out to be not that, but I am not sure I mind. The characters are well drawn and less archetypal (physicist-priest, anyone?) than I was expecting, and I quickly became emotionally engaged with them. The story is a mystery, but doesn’t require tortuous logical deduction—it is more that a variety of people know various pieces, and the things they know are often quite large, so instead of a dead canary and a set of footprints, person x says they saw person y kill z. That information is part of a larger ecosystem of secrets and interlocking narratives that seems both more natural (since real life always has layers) and more contrived, since things do get wrapped up nicely, and the endings are happy, but that is what I want.
I guess my only complaint is the post-war Cold War era. On the one hand, the story requires that, but I just wasn’t sold on it. This might just be because it is less “foreign” in time and space than many other historical settings, though!
This book is clearly the beginning of an arc that will cover multiple books- I will continue the series.
This turns out to be not that, but I am not sure I mind. The characters are well drawn and less archetypal (physicist-priest, anyone?) than I was expecting, and I quickly became emotionally engaged with them. The story is a mystery, but doesn’t require tortuous logical deduction—it is more that a variety of people know various pieces, and the things they know are often quite large, so instead of a dead canary and a set of footprints, person x says they saw person y kill z. That information is part of a larger ecosystem of secrets and interlocking narratives that seems both more natural (since real life always has layers) and more contrived, since things do get wrapped up nicely, and the endings are happy, but that is what I want.
I guess my only complaint is the post-war Cold War era. On the one hand, the story requires that, but I just wasn’t sold on it. This might just be because it is less “foreign” in time and space than many other historical settings, though!
This book is clearly the beginning of an arc that will cover multiple books- I will continue the series.