bad book of badness

[deird1]

Penhallow really is one of the worst murder mysteries ever written. Georgette Heyer must have been depressed and annoyed with the world when she wrote it, or something - because I can't possibly conceive of how you'd write this book and call it a murder mystery if you were happy.

In this book:
- An unpleasant family spend 200 or so pages being unpleasant to each other.
- Everyone thinks about how much better it would be if Lord Penhallow died.
- Lord Penhallow dies.
- Everyone keeps being unpleasant.
- Everyone gets depressed about how much life still sucks and wasn't improved by Penhallow's death.
- The murderer kills himself, leaving no indication behind as to why he killed Penhallow.
- The detectives wonder why he did it, concluding that it's a "most unsatisfactory case".
- Life goes on - unpleasantly as ever.

...seriously, what was the point?


There are very clear rules as to what's supposed to happen in murder mysteries. Generally, you have
1) at least one person we like
2) a few fun discussions about the murder
3) a grisly, exciting, baffling murder
4) a happy ending
5) lots of interesting clues that solve the case.

I'm not saying you have to have all of them, but this book doesn't have any! It's horrible, depressing, and seems to have been written purely so Heyer could spend 300 pages proving how much life sucks.


*needs some Christie to take away the bad taste*

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

If I'm remembering the right book (not _certain_, but the details seem to match), wasn't the murderer the new wife, and what's-his-name suicided (thus accidentally taking the blame for the murder) because he thought the servant had heard Penhallow telling him he was a bastard?