Checking through C/W MARS, that title was only available as one of a set of 3, so I requested it.
I'm afraid my first impression was disappointment. The book, while newer than 1906, was still old and had been rebound in a less-than-appealing plain red cover. Because it had been rebound, the inner margins were minimal, making the book hard to keep open and I had to work to read the ends of the lines on the left-hand page and the beginnings of the lines on the right. And the print was small. I considered returning the book and forgetting about this excursion.
It is a testament to Mary Roberts Rinehart that I finished all three stories.
Her writing style reminds me of Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett and Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories are somewhat convoluted and not always easy to follow. But I found myself enjoying them.
Typical of her times, she tends to make sweeping generalizations such as this sentence from The Case of Jennie Brice written in 1913. "There was something big about her, something which is often found in large women, a lack of spite." While that's a nice thing to say about someone (in this case Jennie Brice), I'm not sure that all "large women" can be described that way. Another comment about another character was that if he left his light on at night he must be a murderer.
My preference, however, is to read contemporary mysteries and I recently read my first book by Louise Penny Kingdom of the Blind. It had just arrived at my local public library and was listed in the Wednesday morning email Wowbrary.
This series takes place in the Canadian province of Quebec and features Chief Inspector Gamache. Like Donna Leon and Faye Kellerman, there is a lot of character development and description of family life. It makes the characters more real and gives me a real appreciation of a different culture.
Since this series started in 2005, I'm adding Louis Penny to my list of authors to read from the beginning.
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