The title is, to put it mildly, unsubtle once you find out that there was a person named Sun and she died in a fire. It certainly points in big neon letters to the provacation behind the primary plot. And once the convoluted connections among the initially unrelated characters began to emerge, I started thinking about the Orient Express which was pretty much on point. Still, there were a couple of major twists, and he is certainly not the first to appropriate what is possibly Agatha's most stunning plot - unless you consider And Then There Were None, which is sort of the reverse of the Orient Express plot. I'll have to think about that when I get to them in my Agatha reread.
There were a few things which I figured were translation artifacts - odd word choices: a formal word when a casual one would have been more appropriate, and a one or two the other way around - but then the afternotes identify an Icelandic/British couple as the translators. Maybe British English really is that different from American English.
The story fits right in with the other Scandinavian mysteries that I have read - depressing, every single character had an appalling back story. It was a good read and kept me at it, in spite of the chaos of the past week. The most frustrating thing to me was that he created a really interesting detective team - a Vietnamese raised by an Icelandic couple and the usual drunk - who still lives at home with his mother - and an incredibly neurotic crime scene tech, but I didn't feel that he let me get to know any of them well - just hints ... .
Maybe he has intentions of making these people a series and background will be dropped in along the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment