City of Light in The Complete Idiots Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Jun 09, 2011 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it did not like it

Shelves: suspense, romance, ultimate-reading-list, crime, fiction, novels, historical-fiction, mystery

I love novels that are a mix of genres, and the back of this book billed it as a mix of murder mystery, romance and historical fiction--set in the Buffalo, New York of 1901. The story is told by Louisa Barrett, a progressive thirty-something headmistress of an elite girls school for the daughters of the wealthy and powerful. She's close to the wealthy Thomas Sinclair, the adoptive father of nine-year-old Grace. (I guessed the so-called secret of her birth and parentage as soon as she was mention I love novels that are a mix of genres, and the back of this book billed it as a mix of murder mystery, romance and historical fiction--set in the Buffalo, New York of 1901. The story is told by Louisa Barrett, a progressive thirty-something headmistress of an elite girls school for the daughters of the wealthy and powerful. She's close to the wealthy Thomas Sinclair, the adoptive father of nine-year-old Grace. (I guessed the so-called secret of her birth and parentage as soon as she was mentioned. I think Belfer would have done better to hang a lantern on it from the beginning rather than endlessly, heavily hint. Well, half-guessed, and the other half is just too ridiculous.) Louisa is quick to suspect Sinclair when a man he argued with is killed. Far too quick--even though she claims to be close to the Sinclairs and there's no good reason to believe the death isn't an accident. Soon her help is recruited by reporter Franklin Fiske.

The narrative flowed well, and Belfer was good at conjuring up both the opulent wealth and squalid poverty of the Gilded Age. However, I soon found myself irritated by the heavy handed left-wing pieties and platitudes about this period and her too modern sensibilities and the outright headshaking nonsensical. We're supposed to believe that to be respectable yet mix among men, her cover is to let people think she's a lesbian. A charity and the woman who works hard for it is supposed to be evil because she cares about efficiency, efficacy and dependency--that is she makes this evil distinction between "deserving" and "undeserving" poor and wants to make sure help goes to those who need it and won't use it to buy gin rather than feed their children. I rolled my eyes when I hit the passage from Fiske about electricity belonging "to the people" and after that was sure where the so-called mystery was headed. Before many more pages after that I just headed to the back and checked, and I wasn't wrong. Too annoyingly predictable with clanging anvils streaming behind. ...more

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