Scarlett Thomas

The death of twins poses a problem for part-time sleuth Lily Pascale, who must find time in her busy schedule as a university professor to investigate the crime.

A Lily Pascale Mystery

Seaside

Ipek

A baffling read for me, to say the least. Of the Lily Pascale books, the first I read was In Your Face, the second one in the series and having been told prior to reading it that it wasn't as good as the later Thomas books, I was still delighted by it. Which makes the clunky, paint-by-numbers plot of this book all the more strange to behold -- was it not written after the second one? I can enjoy meandering, not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper kind of mysteries, which sounds like a counterintuitive thing to say, but I really can, when the characters and their interactions are done right, in which case the mystery can take the back seat even if it's a mystery novel. Case in point, Rendell's Barbara Vine books. That was not the case with this one -- the mysterious love interest guy with the dark past, the Mean Girls/Black Swan twin girl, Pascale's weird tendency to say things like "cursing in French, for my father is French, I then walked toward the door" -- all of it so off. I was left with a kind of sadness on finishing the book, because I had been looking forward to reading it. Scarlett Thomas is one of my favorite writers of all time, yet I can sort of see why these books are out of print.

Seaside A Lily Pascale Mystery

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