Murder on the Last Frontier by Cathy PegauMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Set in a small frontier town in Alaska after the first Word War, Murder on the Last Frontier has a lot of really interesting aspects to it, but it just didn't make it over as few nit-picky things to land itself into 'really good' for me.
The writing was just a touch clunky for me, a lot of repetition of things, and a bit too much telling instead of showing from the main character Charlotte. At the start of the book there is quite a bit of her alluding to a traumatic incident in her past that as a reader you figure out pretty quickly. However, it takes forever for Charlotte to clearly say what it was which also happens at the same time as a rather graphic autopsy. The description of the autopsy caught me off guard, a cozy mystery this book isn't.
Charlotte's detective powers lag a bit behind the reader's which can be either a good or bad thing depending on how you prefer your mysteries to play out. she is an interesting character, and the town is an interesting setting, Pegau has a good start at building both up for future books in this one. But if you are looking for romance there is only a fleeting wink to it for the future.
Good first book, interesting setting and character, I might pick up the next book to see if Pegau is able to work out some of the weaknesses as well as flesh out the town.
SPOILERS BELOW***
I did like how Pegau wrote and treated the sex workers (the ones who survived), although I found the murder of one to be a overdone plot. Having that as the main mystery made it fairly easy to solve from the reader's perspective even with the waving of red herrings.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment