Quit Monks or Die!

Rating:
Summary: A Mystery?
Review: I found this book very frustrating and hard to follow. I bought it along with a couple of other paperback mysteries and wish I hadn't paid the hardcover price! Try "A Force of Habit" for REAL mystery. This first time author did an incredible job keeping me guessing till the end.

Rating:
Summary: A Mystery?
Review: I found this book very frustrating and hard to follow. I bought it along with a couple of other paperback mysteries and wish I hadn't paid the hardcover price! Try "A Force of Habit" for REAL mystery. This first time author did an incredible job keeping me guessing till the end.

Rating:
Summary: Promise not fulfilled
Review: Ms. Kumin seems to be depending on her reputation as a wordsmith to carry an original, but badly confused, mystery novel. My wife passed the book to me with the comment, "You like mysteries, this book drives me crazy". The assertion is true, but I feel her implied criticism is unwarrented. Good mysteries do not obscure by twisting the time sequence of each chapter so that the reader is confused as he reads sequentially. This is fakery and gratuitous reader manipulation. This could be a good read, but it is not. An editor should have said, "Maxine, what are you trying to say? Where is the 'mystery'? Have you thought about the impression your book will leave on the reader?" There are some good descriptions of the land right next to some pedestrian prose (unusual for a poet). If I were her editor, I'd give it back and tell her to rewrite it.

Rating:
Summary: Promise not fulfilled
Review: Ms. Kumin seems to be depending on her reputation as a wordsmith to carry an original, but badly confused, mystery novel. My wife passed the book to me with the comment, "You like mysteries, this book drives me crazy". The assertion is true, but I feel her implied criticism is unwarrented. Good mysteries do not obscure by twisting the time sequence of each chapter so that the reader is confused as he reads sequentially. This is fakery and gratuitous reader manipulation. This could be a good read, but it is not. An editor should have said, "Maxine, what are you trying to say? Where is the 'mystery'? Have you thought about the impression your book will leave on the reader?" There are some good descriptions of the land right next to some pedestrian prose (unusual for a poet). If I were her editor, I'd give it back and tell her to rewrite it.