March 2016 Value Book Read - For All Our Sins, by T.M.E. Walsh

[Bill]

I am on board.

[Clare]

Just finished Rebound and I will start For All Our Sins now.

[Clare]

I think this will be a good book. The murder of the priest reminds me of White Bones.

I like the relationship between Claire Winter and Michael Diego. There will obviously be a will they?/won't they? thread running through the book.

Thank you to whoever nominated this book.

[Karen]

Have started All Our Sins and having trouble sticking with it. Not exactly sure why.
More of a thriller than detective perhaps. Switched to the new Richard Jury novel. Will go back to AOS when I'm done.

[Juliann]

I'm having trouble with book too; so far about 1/3rd of the way through and I'm not much liking any of the characters. For me, there is way too much Gratuitous Contentiousness and I am
almost beyond caring if Claire and Michael D. hit or miss. I will stick with it because maybe the GC is a plot device after all. Maybe.
And I want to know what is distracting Claire.

[Bill]

Only 6% in but this is an attractive villain - why is as mysterious to me as who. Have 0 sympathy for Diego: it is usually a mistake to have an affair with a colleague, especially if she is a superior officer. He should shut up & carry on as tho it didn't happen,

[Bill]

Not going to finish for a couple of day, but definitely enjoying it & like villain.

[Clare]

I really enjoyed For All Our Sins and I was surprised by the ending. I had to move this month rather unexpectedly and i am not on line at present, once i am i can post my backdated reviews.

[Bill]

Having been asked to help moderate a group may entail shortening one’s DNF list, if only to avoid letting down the members of the group who voted the book in as a group read. Like Jane Casey’s The Burning, this was one of those stories where I found the principal villain much more attractive than the detective. In the case of For All Our Sins, tho’, it was unnecessary to finish to gain the artistic, spiritual & moral benefits it offered. Unfortunately, most of these bennies were examples of what not to do.
Some caveats: Don’t introduce a character & then pretend that the narrators not only doesn’t know said character’s name, but keep referring to said character as ‘they’ to avoid indicating whether ‘they’ are (is?) a man or a woman - especially when the character is obviously acting alone. The reader will not only feel annoyed, but linguistically @ a loss. In this story T. M. E. Walsh is following the recent practice of having two villains, a (very attractive) villain known from the the start, & a hidden bad-hat to be revealed later. In this case, both the sex & the identity of villain no. 2 are very easy to spot & revealed long before the end, but not before the reader feels treated like an illiterate & a toady.

In the case of the principal detective, Claire, we also learn that if you are the SIO it is not a good idea of have had an affair with a junior colleague, especially if it’s someone you didn’t even like (for good reasons). Creates bad morale on the team (including punch-ups). Add divorced parents who hate each other - esp. a non-compliant & querulous dad who is going to find out @ a care home either to become the most cheerful & compliant patient he can be or how debility & dependence can be absolute hell & a mum who ought to remember that it was she who chose to marry him. Of course Claire could reflect as well that she owes her existence to them. In favour of the villains we can say that all their victims deserve killing, tho’ to have not just one but three paedophile abusive priests as victims seemed a trifle OTT. (For good measure, couple of thugs, a nasty rental agent, & a vicious dog also get what they deserve.)

In short, this story is thoroughly unpleasant & tho’ cheap to buy, the time spent reading it can never be recovered. If you’ve read Erin Kelly or Angela Marsons, you’ve done a lot better. If like me, you are an aspiring fiction writer, you will also be encouraged to persist with your efforts. You can probably write @ least as good a story as this.