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A review by tyrshand
Death in Focus by Anne Perry
3.0
I used to read a lot of Anne Perry’s mysteries — I quite lived Charlotte Pitt. However, apparently I’m not as keen on Perry’s spy thrillers. I just could not get too interested in Elena’s flopping into trouble because she’s hanging around with one dude or another. It is quite lucky for her that so many men, for reasons of their own, helped her out of scrape after scrape. Often to their detriment.
I’m not too sure why the rest of her family had so much page-time as they were pretty unhelpful and divorced from much of the main plot. I don’t think we really needed to know as much about them as we did. If anything, their scenes seemed to be about being the moral right. Like, yay, I do want reads with acceptance of diversity! However, it seemed a bit disingenuous to have the Brits in the story be so “why those awful Germans and their cruel views on Gypsies, Jews, and homosexuals!” as if that was just Nazi stuff and not, you know, pretty common. The British, after all, put their own extremely valuable asset, Alan Turing, through hell for being gay not long after this book is set. So yeah, it’s cool to have the Standishes be so accepting, but make sure it doesn’t appear that everyone except the Nazis were so very noble.
I’m not too sure why the rest of her family had so much page-time as they were pretty unhelpful and divorced from much of the main plot. I don’t think we really needed to know as much about them as we did. If anything, their scenes seemed to be about being the moral right. Like, yay, I do want reads with acceptance of diversity! However, it seemed a bit disingenuous to have the Brits in the story be so “why those awful Germans and their cruel views on Gypsies, Jews, and homosexuals!” as if that was just Nazi stuff and not, you know, pretty common. The British, after all, put their own extremely valuable asset, Alan Turing, through hell for being gay not long after this book is set. So yeah, it’s cool to have the Standishes be so accepting, but make sure it doesn’t appear that everyone except the Nazis were so very noble.