A Yorkshire Murder Mystery #5
“Fine brain, eh? You must be talking about me.”
Jim Oldroyd
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in return for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
The Nidderdale Murders is a whodunnit with an unusual twist. I kept getting the feeling of an old tv detective much of the time that I was reading, and the case kept me guessing until the end. However, the story is dragged down by flat characters and clunky sentence structure.
This book was hard for me to get into initially because of all the British jargon thrown at you from the get-go. As an American, I don’t know what a DCI is other than what the context gives off as clues. It also took me longer than I care to admit to come to the conclusion that a grouse butt was a type of hunting blind, not a bird’s rear end. A couple of times, I had to look up a term because I wasn’t familiar with what an item would exactly look like. This disconnect doesn’t affect my rating but did make it harder to get immersed in the story.
The case is the star of the story as it should be. Everyone is hiding something, and Oldroyd and his team must figure out what is pertinent to the case before it goes cold or the killer strikes again. Especially towards the end, it was a fun ride to the final reveal.
My biggest issue is that the characters never really came to life to me. There are sparks of personality, but nothing really sets anyone apart. A lot of this, I consider part of the clunky structuring. “It was…” is one of the most frequent starts to sentences and often where more detail in the proceeding sentence could have made the characters more real. There is also extraneous detail added that doesn’t add to the story. For example, what type of house Henrietta has in London doesn’t add anything to what is happening in Nidderdale and is just dumped in seemingly from nowhere.
Overall, if you are a fan of slow-paced police procedurals and mysteries, it is worth reading.
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