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I've deliberately cut back on reading modern crime in recent weeks, having felt a little overwhelmed by it in the autumn. I think this strategy, combined with the genuine merits of this novel, paid off; Flight of the Stone Angel held my attention in a way that many modern mysteries have failed to do.
It's hard to put my finger on what makes this one so good: partly it's the lush descriptions of the Mississippi landscape, I think (I started out finding them rather pretentious, but they grew on me). Probably nearer the mark, though, is the element of surprise. So many thrillers are so tediously formulaic, and in this one I honestly didn't know what was going to happen next. Wonderfully ambiguous characters, too, with plenty left unsaid about all of them.
And it ended with that satisfying/frustrating revelation: that the entire mystery was laid out before the reader all the way through, and you really ought to have guessed it.
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7891852
It's hard to put my finger on what makes this one so good: partly it's the lush descriptions of the Mississippi landscape, I think (I started out finding them rather pretentious, but they grew on me). Probably nearer the mark, though, is the element of surprise. So many thrillers are so tediously formulaic, and in this one I honestly didn't know what was going to happen next. Wonderfully ambiguous characters, too, with plenty left unsaid about all of them.
And it ended with that satisfying/frustrating revelation: that the entire mystery was laid out before the reader all the way through, and you really ought to have guessed it.
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/7891852
