Little Knell

Rating:
Summary: Good read, dry humor, one tiny quibble
Review: Aird always has ingeniously plotted crimes and very good characterization, and this is no exception. Her humor is dry, understated and one of the reasons I liked to read her as a teenager. Many of her titles are a play on words, like "Little Knell" and "A Religious Body." Hadn't read her in years, then I inherited my mother's paperbacks of just about all her books. I read them all one right after the other they held up to a second and third reading really well. Which leads me to the quibble...she's given a character name that shouldn't be here. Oh well. He's still the same sort he was in Last Respects. Obviously a solid English name and doesn't spoil the story a bit.

Aird's a little like Agatha Christie as a writer about crime in the English village. She's a better writer than Christie, thourh. She is better with characterization--her characters behave more like real people. Christie tended to write rather flat, cartoonish, if easily identifiable characters--sometimes her villians often seem a bit two-dimensonal and overdramatized, her heroines (particularly in some of the earlier ones) oversentimentalized. I don't reread Christie unless I NEED a book and there's nothing else.

Partly I guess it's the passing of years and changes in writing technique. I enjoyed some Christies in elementary and junior high school but don't think I would have "gotten" as much of the humor in Aird back then. Christie was good with puzzles, of course, and was very productive over her career. And her estate has managed her "brand" wonderfully.

Aird's writing overall is more complete and more complex. The tags that identify her characters seem more naturally woven into the story (Sloan's roses, Crosby's driving, Leyes' attempts to use material from some evening class or other in possibly apposite reasoning). Her puzzles are satisfying without being too outrageous or silly and she does get a lot of good sharp jabs at human nature. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: An Intelligent Look at the Modern Drug Scene
Review: Ms. Aird's writing is superb in all of her books, and this one is no exception. I love correct English grammar and spelling and Ms. Aird is superlative at this, and she does it all with a dry wit and careful characterizations. I'm almost getting to the end of all her books, and I'm certainly sad about that. Ms. Aird is like no one out there. She is a little like a modern day Agatha Christie, but she's far funnier, her writing actually has more clever twists in it that most of the golden age detective writers. If you enjoy fine writing and clever plots, I suggest that you begin to read all Ms. Aird's books. You will totally enjoy them. In this book we see an intelligent look at the modern day drug scene. In her inimitable way, Ms. Aird captures this slice of humanity with a very sure hand. A body of a young girl turns up in a 2000 year old sarcophagus that is supposed to hold an Egyptian mummy. The girl is much fresher than 2000 years (in fact the corpse is about a week old when she is found.) Tracking this killer leads Sloan and Crosby into the drug world and they take a crash course on drug smuggling and money laundering. What a treat!

Rating:
Summary: An Intelligent Look at the Modern Drug Scene
Review: Ms. Aird's writing is superb in all of her books, and this one is no exception. I love correct English grammar and spelling and Ms. Aird is superlative at this, and she does it all with a dry wit and careful characterizations. I'm almost getting to the end of all her books, and I'm certainly sad about that. Ms. Aird is like no one out there. She is a little like a modern day Agatha Christie, but she's far funnier, her writing actually has more clever twists in it that most of the golden age detective writers. If you enjoy fine writing and clever plots, I suggest that you begin to read all Ms. Aird's books. You will totally enjoy them. In this book we see an intelligent look at the modern day drug scene. In her inimitable way, Ms. Aird captures this slice of humanity with a very sure hand. A body of a young girl turns up in a 2000 year old sarcophagus that is supposed to hold an Egyptian mummy. The girl is much fresher than 2000 years (in fact the corpse is about a week old when she is found.) Tracking this killer leads Sloan and Crosby into the drug world and they take a crash course on drug smuggling and money laundering. What a treat!

Rating:
Summary: an engaing read with loads of dry humour
Review: The Chief Inspector C. D. Sloan (Seedy to his friends) books are probably some of the cleverest police procedural British mysteries around. Written with minimal violence, this is a very well written series that revolves around the very dry and droll exchanges between Sloan (a very precise and methodical man) and the many uniquely eccentric people he frequently works with -- from his long winded and quotation loving boss, Superintendent Leeyes to his very young and rather dim car-mad underling, Detective Constable Crosby. This latest Sloan mystery involves a missing mummy, a murdered young woman, and drugs.

It all starts when the coroner receiving an anonymous tip that a body has been moved within his jurisdiction of East Calleshire, but without his knowledge or consent, and the coroner wants the police to investigate. It turns out that the body concerned is that of a mummy that has been bequeathed to the local Calleshire museum by the now dead Colonel Caversham. Sloan is a little annoyed. He has just received a warning from the customs and excise people to be on the lookout for increased crime since they had just removed about 4 kilos of heroin from circulation, and Sloan would rather spend his time trying to nab the ringleader of this local drug ring than chasing after a mummy. However when the sarcophagus is opened they find the body of a young woman who looks as if she's been dead for less than a week instead of the expected mummy. The curator of the museum is aghast -- where is the mummy? But for Sloan the questions are very different: who is the murdered woman? And who tipped off the coroner about the body? Sloan will have to sift through much before he can finally arrive at the conclusion of this very perplexing mystery.

The great thing about Catherine Aird's Sloan novels is that there are no extraneous characters or plot lines. Everything has a significance, so that if you pay close attention you can actaully solve the mystery along with Sloan. This makes Aird's books perfect brain teasers. This entire series is clever, amusing and entirely engaging. "Little Knell" definitely makes for a very good read.

Rating:
Summary: Good read, dry humor, one tiny quibble
Review: When the body of a young woman shows up in place of an Egyptian mummy, the investigation leads in many directions. Detective Inspector Sloan, assisted by Detective Constable Crosby, finds trails that lead to a museum, accounting firms, an animal shelter, a suspected smuggler, and unknown drug dealers. Illegal drugs involve large amounts of cash. There are questions about which people have become tainted, and about how money is being laundered. As the case finally draws to a conclusion, justice has its own way of meting out punishment.

The 201 page novel is divided into 17 chapters printed in an easy-to-read font (I am looking at the hard cover edition). The novel has no significant sexual content, and violence is by reference. There are some technical details concerning anthrax - this was published before the recent problems in the USA. The novel is suitable for teenage readers.

Rating:
Summary: A well written original plot
Review: When the body of a young woman shows up in place of an Egyptian mummy, the investigation leads in many directions. Detective Inspector Sloan, assisted by Detective Constable Crosby, finds trails that lead to a museum, accounting firms, an animal shelter, a suspected smuggler, and unknown drug dealers. Illegal drugs involve large amounts of cash. There are questions about which people have become tainted, and about how money is being laundered. As the case finally draws to a conclusion, justice has its own way of meting out punishment.

The 201 page novel is divided into 17 chapters printed in an easy-to-read font (I am looking at the hard cover edition). The novel has no significant sexual content, and violence is by reference. There are some technical details concerning anthrax - this was published before the recent problems in the USA. The novel is suitable for teenage readers.