A review by dogearedandfurry
Murder on the Oxford Canal by Faith Martin

2.0

Ugh. An utter slog. I’m amazed a particular friend loved this enough to recommend it to me, as I’d never have suggested this to her - everyone seems to want to sleep with someone. Mallow has the hots for Janine, they have a date, he asks her out again and she says no - so he swears to himself he won’t ask again. Except he does, and although she appeared to not want anything, she then goes from miserable to happy. They sleep together and he asks her out again, but she declines. Far too indecisive. There must be many reasons not to sleep with your coworkers. Twice we read about Hilary’s shirt stretching taught across her breasts (gag) and there were at least 3 if not 4 mentions of her nut brown eyes, as if the author couldn’t think of another description, yet felt compelled to keep reminding us. Which is odd she couldn’t think of other descriptions, because she seemed at pains to show she owned a thesaurus many times - it was always things like lascivious thoughts or fulminous scowls. Many times, people said things “unnecessarily” - presumably because the author couldn’t think of any other way to slip it into the narrative? And what was with the long descriptions, such as her cramped living quarters that turned out to be (after several paragraphs laboured the point)... a narrow boat?

Thank god I got this as a “books 1-5 in one Kindle book” for 99p. It was a real slog to get through, and it’s a short book.