O Gentle Death

Rating:
Summary: I enjoyed this book
Review: I've read all of Janet Neel's books, except for "To Die For," and I enjoyed this one. It's not the best in the series, but when I got it from the library I read it within two days (that's fast for a working Mom who doesn't have a lot of spare time!). Give it a chance, especially if you enjoy British mysteries.

Rating:
Summary: I enjoyed this book
Review: I've read all of Janet Neel's books, except for "To Die For," and I enjoyed this one. It's not the best in the series, but when I got it from the library I read it within two days (that's fast for a working Mom who doesn't have a lot of spare time!). Give it a chance, especially if you enjoy British mysteries.

Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Review: None of the rich people who go to, teach at, or send their children to Faraday Trust (a boarding school) like Catriona Roberts very much. She's depressed and tries to commit suicide--how tiresome. When she's killed (halfway through the book), the police have got to find who killed her. Fortunately they luck into the answer right before the gratuitous romance at the end.

This is not a good book. Janet Neel can write--although I prefer a little less elitist style, but her characters don't develop.

I did get a laugh, though, over Neel's description of the characters in this novel as middle class (remember, they're the ones sending their children to an expensive boarding school because they are so busy and important that they can't watch them themselves, even with the nannies they've got at home.

I didn't guess who did the deed--maybe it was Neel's strategy to give us such a lot of unpleasant characters that we wished they'd all go to jail. And were we supposed to be so contemptuous of poor Catriona? Lucky for me I didn't go to school with Neel.

Not Recommended.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: death song
Review: O Gentle Death is a very fine novel which also happens to be a murder mystery. Janet Neel has fleshed over the bare bones of a classic Scotland Yard procedural with interesting glimpses of the lives of a diverse group of realistic characters. There are no Colonel Mustards or Mrs. Peacocks here. I recommend the book enthusiatically.

The main thread of the plot unwinds at Faraday Trust, a progressive British boarding school, where the arts and individuality are cherished and nourished. As the end of spring term approaches, so do signs of trouble. The Trustees of the school have asked the headmaster to step down because weak test results for university admisssion are hurting enrollment. Several members of the staff are vying to succeed him. Catriona Roberts, an underachieving, unhappy sixth-former is causing problems for her fellow students and for the staff -- which includes both her step-parents. Her death at a London party attended by many of the staff, her biological parents, and several of her classmates proves to be murder rather than suicide.

Chief Inspector John McLeish (whom I take to be a regular fixture in Mrs. Neel's novels) has connections to the school and to several of its students through his wife Francesca, a musician and college administrator on maternity leave. McLeish and Francesca are present at the party and he is ordered to take charge of the investigation into Catriona's murder despite an obvious conflict of interest. He and his team work desperately to solve the murder before the suspects disperse at the end of term. Refreshingly, the case is not solved either by clever detective work or by having the sleuth recklessly put himself in harm's way, as so many mystery stories are these days.

Rating:
Summary: death song
Review: O Gentle Death is a very fine novel which also happens to be a murder mystery. Janet Neel has fleshed over the bare bones of a classic Scotland Yard procedural with interesting glimpses of the lives of a diverse group of realistic characters. There are no Colonel Mustards or Mrs. Peacocks here. I recommend the book enthusiatically.

The main thread of the plot unwinds at Faraday Trust, a progressive British boarding school, where the arts and individuality are cherished and nourished. As the end of spring term approaches, so do signs of trouble. The Trustees of the school have asked the headmaster to step down because weak test results for university admisssion are hurting enrollment. Several members of the staff are vying to succeed him. Catriona Roberts, an underachieving, unhappy sixth-former is causing problems for her fellow students and for the staff -- which includes both her step-parents. Her death at a London party attended by many of the staff, her biological parents, and several of her classmates proves to be murder rather than suicide.

Chief Inspector John McLeish (whom I take to be a regular fixture in Mrs. Neel's novels) has connections to the school and to several of its students through his wife Francesca, a musician and college administrator on maternity leave. McLeish and Francesca are present at the party and he is ordered to take charge of the investigation into Catriona's murder despite an obvious conflict of interest. He and his team work desperately to solve the murder before the suspects disperse at the end of term. Refreshingly, the case is not solved either by clever detective work or by having the sleuth recklessly put himself in harm's way, as so many mystery stories are these days.

Rating:
Summary: not that intriguing or interesting
Review: This latest DCI McLeish/Francesca Wilson murder mystery centers on the murder of an unpopular and troublesome 16 year old student, Catriona Roberts, who happens to board at the extremely posh Faraday Trust, a fashionable liberal coed boarding school with a reputation for nurturing musical geniuses. (In fact, Jamie Brett, McLeish's godson attends Faraday, and happens to be one of the few real friends that Catriona really had.) The trouble with young Catriona, we learn, is that not only is she difficult and moody, (and relatively talentless artistically), but she has developed a rather heavy crush on another student, Giles Quentin, Faraday's rising musical star, of whom great things are expected, and has more or less taken to pestering him for his attention. The fact that Giles has no interest in her, and has told her off over and over again, rather brutally, seems to have had no effect on Catriona at all. Catriona has also suddenly exhibited signs of being rather sexually promiscuous, and who has also begun accusing the male teachers of sexually harassing her. Add to that the fact that the students are all cramming for their A levels, and that the school itself is suffering a crisis of leadership (the headmaster is resigning and the trustees are looking at candidates both within and outside the school), and you get the idea that things are rather tense at Faraday right now. And then Catriona is found dead in a bathtub. Everyone assumes suicide; however a closer examination of the evidence reveals that she was murdered, and that she was pregnant. Who could have murdered Catriona and why? Was Catriona murdered because she was pregnant? Or was she murdered in order to preserve the reputation of the school? Or was it because she was in someone's way? For McLeish, it's beginning to look as if half the school and staff had a stake in seeing Catriona permanently silenced.

The trouble with "O Gentle Death" was that I developed an enormous amount of sympathy and understanding for Catriona, and for practically no one else in the book, except perhaps Jamie Brett. The entire air about the novel was one of 'poor Catriona, but she was a rather unpleasant young lady, and oh well, life must go on for us more talented and pleasant types.' Only Jamie seemed to really feel as if everyone had let Catriona down rather badly, not that he was allowed to feel that way for long, however! Also I found it interesting/odd that Faraday's seemed to be populated almost completely with artistically gifted upper middle class kids. The appearance, however slight, of just one artistically gifted working class scholarship student, would have made this novel a lot more realistic, and a little less elitist. I got the sense that I was practically stepping back in time, to the 1950s when reading much of this novel. And then there was that rather odd romance subplot involving a young woman from New Zealand and Matt Sunderland, a sometime regular in the McLeish/Wilson murder mysteries. What exactly this plot had to do with the novel, except get in the way, I have yet to figure out.

The basic plot premise of "O Gentle Death" is an interesting one; and the manner in which Neel spins a web around the idea that Catriona was murdered because she was in someone's way, (whether it was towards the headmastership of Faraday's or musical success of Giles Quentin is left to the reader to wrestle with), was inspired. However the entire atmosphere and prose style was a little too rarefied for me. (I never realised how strong my republican leaning were until I read this book!) I found myself taking very little joy in character development, and skimming through the novel until I got to the bits that dealt with the police investigation. The entire old fashioned, elitist air about this novel really put me off. Sad to say, I didn't think too much of "O Gentle Death."

Rating:
Summary: okay - with faults
Review: Wouldn't a school like Faraday insist that the parents of a disturbed student get her some professional help, or at least remove her from the premises?

Catriona's father didn't want her to go to a mental hospital because they might notice her blood type precluded her being his child? Please.

Would the police insist on following a woman to the bathroom for her protection, but not bother checking that the bathroom was safe before letting go in? Come on! That just seemed like a quick way to wrap things up.

This is the first of Janet Neel's books I've read. I'm disappointed because she writes well enough, but the mystery part of it seemed lacking--boring even--although I didn't guess who'd done the deed. Francesca and Alex were interesting enough as characters. Jamie was too saintly to be believable. The others never gelled for me as complete people.

I will look for more of Neel's books. Maybe this one was a fluke.