The thing is, YHB thinks that Laurie R. King writes like a sonofabitch. Good stuff. Which is why I looked forward to her new book, and why, in fact, I’ve looked forward to her last several good books, despite some of them not being, you know, good books. Still, Touchstone seemed promising. True, of her earlier standalone novels, I had only moderately liked one, left one unfinished and never attempted the third, but this was set in England in 1926, which is right up my alley, right? No, Harold Nicolson doesn’t appear, but Stanley Baldwin does, fortunately as a minor character. It’s centered around the Great Strike, which, again, should be a natural source of interest. And emotionally, its theme is the wrecked, returned soldier, unable to readjust to society, and once again, right in the old wheelhouse.
So. Do you know the thing where there’s a brief bit in a prologue from the point of view of the Villain? And the writer is trying to slip past the reader the total absence of certain markers? And then we are set up to believe that the Villain is a certain Bad Guy, but then, at the last minute, in a wrenching plot twist, we discover that it’s not the Bad Guy but his wife? Shock! Etcetera! Only, once you’ve had that trick two or three times, the fact that the sex of the Villain is not revealed is glaringly obvious, and it’s obvious at that moment that (a) the Villain is female, and (2) the fact that the Villain is female is supposed to come as a shock at the end of the book. Which makes it very difficult to enjoy the rest of the book.
And once YHB is cranky about that, all the little things that should be shrugged off are instead major annoyances. Our Hero, an American FBI agent who dropped out of college being a connoisseur of painting, to the point of being able to recognize a Constable from across the room as well as immediately putting a name to a Grunewald painting (of which there are ten or so in the world), all without any explanation at all of any kind. Well, all right, people do like art. Only I’m cranky so it’s a Flaw. Oh, and the bit where one chapter starts with Character A looking at himself in the mirror, and then the next chapter starts with Character B looking at herself in the mirror, and then the next chapter with Character C looking at himself in the mirror, going on for seventy-’leven chapters and characters? If I’m happy, it’s clever; if I’m cranky, it’s a Flaw.
On the other hand, it’s an interesting thing that because the unmarked state is male, in a mystery/thriller novel, having a state conspicuously unmarked signifies as female. Or maybe I’m just cranky.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.