Rating: 
Summary: Not A Good Mystery
Review: This was the second book by Emily Toll that I read.I enjoyed reading about the California Gold Country and learning about the horrific, no longer used practice of hydraulic mining. I liked the characters. However, the mystery wasn't very good. There were not enough viable suspects. Also, I figured out who the murderer was before it was disclosed. I can rarely do this. Although I enjoyed the first book more, I don't know if I'll bother to read a third.
Rating: 
Summary: what makes this a mystery?
Review: When I pick up a mystery novel from a top publisher I expect that it will follow certain standards of the genre: there will be a murder; there will be an investigation, either by the police or by an amateur sleuth; that investigation will gradually lead to the uncovering of clues; those clues will be put together to solve the mystery. There is room for a great deal of variation within that pattern, but that's what a mystery novel is all about.
So I find myself asking, What makes this a mystery? The murder doesn't occur until the end of chapter 11. The group of school teachers who are vacationing in California's Gold Country do not do one iota of sleuthing. They bumble along on their merry way, giving us long lectures about the Gold Rush or trying to deal with family and marital problems. A couple of chapters from the end, one of the women wonders if an old lamp they bought might have something to do with a series of strange mishaps which have befallen them. They catch one of the minor culprits when one goes back to a hotel room to retrieve something and stumbles across him. (He immediately gives up.)
When I get impatient with a book I usually quit on it and read something else. Life is too short to waste time on bad books. This one drew me along because I kept telling myself it couldn't be as bad as it seemed and still be published by a top house. But it was.
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