Death on the Shelf discussion
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Death in D Minor
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Melinda
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Nov 11, 2020 09:22AM
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Hi all,Sorry this is early but I'm closing on a house on the 15th and will be moving the couple days after that. I enjoyed this book, it was well written and the author had some good knowledge about what I call the themes of this mystery which is the music world and the art forgery, fabric crafts world.
The ghosts were an extra bit that I enjoyed but didn't have to have. I enjoyed all of the additional friends and enemies included in the story as well as the surroundings. I did have to roll my eyes at Gethsemane a couple of times due to her putting herself in unnecessary danger for no reasonable explanation other than "she never gives up". I didn't really buy the bit about her needing to stop Ray right there and then on the train with no backup. Is your getting yourself killed because of not thinking through a plan considered giving up?
I did guess Ray was someone high up on the suspicion list early on but was given no information to correctly figure out why he would want to kill Olivia other than that comment about "she can't sell Essex House, she just can't". The extra bit about Yseult being dirty seemed like a web you weren't meant to untangle and were just supposed to be surprised by at the end. All in all, a good book though.
I'll go early, too.I was rolling my eyes quite a bit. With a title like “Death in D Minor,” I knew there would be death, and I figured music would have a role, maybe a murder during a concert where a fugue in the key of D minor, for instance, figured in somehow. There were deaths, but music was almost an aside to the various forms of mayhem we saw.
We did have a ghost or two playing a minor role in this meandering mystery, which I learned was part of a series of books with musical titles.
I won’t be reading the other four. For one thing, I’m not that into ghostly intrusions in my mysteries, and that seems to be a common thread. For another, this particular mystery never took off for me. There were so many things along the way that made me think “That wouldn’t happen” or “That couldn’t happen,” the foremost example being when Brown went to a derelict factory alone and climbed out on a flimsy catwalk to retrieve an envelope of unknown origin. Even someone without a doctorate might suspect a trap.
I’m also not a fan of textile art. It’s a shortcoming, I know.
The writing wasn’t bad, the characters were often interesting, the relationship between Brown and the inspector is perhaps going somewhere, someday, but the plotting wasn’t as good as it needed to be for me. Mixing in textiles and ghosts didn’t help.
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I agree that Gethsemane's motivation for getting so embroiled in the plot was not particularly grounded. The tie with her brother-in-law was sufficient for a couple of chapters but not to carry her through the distillery etc.
My understanding is that the first book relies more heavily on the musical connection, and the ghost also plays a larger role (whereas in this book the ghosts are just kind of... there... in the first one Eamon's ghost wants his name cleared). I enjoyed the Captain as a comic relief button, but I'm not sure he really paid off.
I liked the art heist aspect and the general air of madcappery (even when a child finds a murdered body, the general attitude of the novel is gentle, which I liked) but I don't think I'll be making Dr. Gethsemane Brown a regular part of my life.
From Linda:Several references were made in this work of fiction to a previous book about a double murder which was solved by the main character here, Gethsemane. Apparently it was also about the occult. I’m not a big fan of the occult and I cannot say I would be enthusiastic about reading it.
The audio reader seemed to be overemphasizing her accent and that annoyed me. Her attempts to use a southern accent was phony. The audio reader on the hoopla version was very fast. The CD recording was a better pace for me.
I never connected with the story and I didn’t really care who the culprit was. I dozed off several times.
The preoccupation with the needlework sampler felt overzealous. I couldn’t really understand it. The references to the destructive hotel developer could have been a glaring parody of Donald Trump. It was interesting.
This book seemed to mimic the movie “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.”
I would rate this book with 2 stars.
