1985; 260 pages. Book 3 (out of 18) in the “Gideon Oliver Mysteries” series. New Author? : No. Genres : International Mystery & Crime; England;
Whodunit; Forensic Anthropology. Overall
Rating : 8*/10.
Hooray! Gideon and Julie are newlyweds! It’s time for their honeymoon!
And a mighty fine honeymoon
it’s going to be for the American couple.
They’re heading for a beautiful part of Great Britain called Dorset. Right on the scenic coast of the English Channel.
How delightfully romantic!
There will be two little side-trips
for Gideon. First, a trip to the
Greater Dorchester Museum of History to see a skull fragment affectionately
called “Pummy”. Then to a nearby archaeological site, where a
former classmate of Gideon’s, Dr. Nate Marcus, is supervising an excavation. Both visits will be short; neither one is
anything major.
Well actually, Nate claims he
is onto something major. He says he’s
uncovered proof that the ancient Mycenaeans visited early Britain and ushered
the locals into the Bronze Age!
Ho hum.
I guess you’d have to be a fellow archaeologist to get excited about
that, and Gideon’s an anthropologist. I certainly can't see that any of this is worth killing somebody over, right?
What’s To Like...
Murder in the
Queen’s Armes is the third book in this 18-volume series, and the second
one I’ve read and which is reviewed here. The title references the inn where Gideon and Julie are staying.
As expected, complications quickly arise that intrude into the couple’s
honeymoon, including several mysteries that have need of Gideon’s technical
expertise as the renowned “skeleton detective”.
I thought the mysteries in the
storyline were well-crafted. To give
details would entail spoilers, but let’s just say that neither Gideon nor the
reader should discard any discovery, no matter how minor it may seem at the
time.
I loved the setting: a
picturesque area along the southern coast of England. I have a Facebook friend who lives nearby,
and she’s posted pictures of Dorset in bloom.
I want to go there!
The technical aspect of the
story also fascinated me. Gideon is
called upon twice to do a skeletal analysis, and I was amazed at how much can
be deduced from an ancient bone, no matter whether “ancient” means a couple
millennia or a couple million years. I
was delighted that my favorite indigenous paleo-British group, the “Beaker People”, figure
into the plotline, and enjoyed learning a number of Yiddish phrases, since one
of the main characters was Jewish, such as doppes,
nu, ungepotchket, farpotchket, and tzimiss.
The ending is good, although
the key break in the investigation doesn't happen until late in the story. So even though this is a whodunit, and even
though there are clues aplenty along the way, don’t be upset if you can’t solve
the crime before Gideon does. The fun
comes with “connecting the dots” from a series of clues.
Kewlest New Word ...
Oleaginously
(adv.) : obsequiously; in an
exaggerated and distastefully complimentary manner.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 1,134
ratings and 102 reviews.
Goodreads: 3.98*/5,
based on 1,842 ratings and 112 reviews.
Excerpts...
“I can’t say I find the Bronze Age all that
fascinating myself. Too recent.”
“Seventeen hundred b.c. is recent?”
“Sure, to an anthropologist. Didn’t you ever hear what Agatha Christie
said about being married to one?”
“I didn’t know she was.”
“Yes, a famous one: Max Mallowan. She said it was wonderful—the older she got,
the more interesting he found her.” (loc. 272)
“He was pretty well soused when I left him
an hour ago.”
“Nate?”
“Yes, indeed. He’s sleeping it off, I think.”
Abe made a decisive little nod. “When we’re finished here, I’ll go down and
fix him up. I’ll make him take a
guggle-muggle.”
“Come again?”
“An old remedy. You mix whiskey, hot tea, molasses, and raw
eggs, and swallow it in one gulp.”
Gideon made a face. “It sounds terrible.”
“That’s why you got to drink it one
gulp. You call it a guggle-muggle
because that’s what it sounds like when it goes down: Guggle, muggle. Believe me, by seven o’clock he’ll be fine.” (loc. 2760)
Kindle Details…
Murder
in the Queen’s Armes sells for $7.99 right now at Amazon. The other books in the series cost
anywhere from $1.99 to $8.99. There are also two "bundles", both
priced at $16.99, one with Books 1-4, the other with Books 5-7.
“He’s glick and
he’s slib, that’s all he is.” (loc.
2576)
There’s not much in Murder in the Queen’s Armes to whine about. The cussing is moderate, 17 instances in the
first 20%, but I didn’t feel that it was overused, and I don’t recall any
f-bombs. There is some romantic banter
between our newlyweds, but nothing salacious.
There were a couple of typos: be/he, chinthursting/chinthrusting, farfetched/far-fetched,
and one (out of six) “house-keeping”
variant of the correct “housekeeping”,
but overall the editing was pretty clean.
There were also several instances unintended breaks in paragraphs, but I
blame the Amazon conversion program for that, since I’ve seen that in other
e-books. More annoying were a couple of
scene switches without any signal, although this too could be the Amazon
program’s fault.
Overall, I enjoyed Murder
in the Queen’s Armes. It was a
fast-paced, quick, easy read. I
loved the setting, and all the genre components—mystery, archaeology,
anthropology, intrigue, and even romance—were nicely blended. I’ve got a couple more e-books from this
series sitting on my Kindle, and I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy getting
better acquainted with Gideon Oliver.
8 Stars. One last “Kewlest New Word” for your vocabulary enhancement: the aforementioned hangover cure called guggle-muggle. I’d never heard of it, and thought at first it was something Aaron Elkins made up. But Wikipedia has a post about a milder variation of it, a dessert, and with several variant spellings including gogle-mogle, gogol-mogol, and kogel mogel. Wiki it. It is not likely to be added to my dessert list anytime soon.
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