Yet another in this series. They’re still holding my attention though I am concerned as we slip closer and closer to WWII times.
French has written some of my favorite mystery type novels. Weird sorts of stories where there are a lot of emotions wrapped up in what seems to be like a pretty normal case. This book is ... sort of not like that. It’s a very dry procedural (or maybe the emotions that are involved in it are ones I didn’t relate to) about a murder that is tricky and a whole lot of interpersonal cop stuff that goes on while figuring it all out. I liked it but it didn’t have French’s usual underlying hum of weirdness and deep feelings.
Wanted to like this book nut ultimately it was too chemistry-ish for me and seemed like it could have used some more editing (one story in the preface was repeated almost verbatim later in the book and it was not a short story). The stories themselves are interesting, learning how the periodic table has changed over time and arguments about naming and etc, but the author is a real chemistry nerd and I didn’t find his writing approachable enough to be able to keep moving through it.
Got this off of the new shelf at the public library. I’d read some of it before as magazine articles. I appreciated how Parkin didn’t just go the normal boring “Video games are dangerous!” route and instead looked into the subtleties of the arguments about them. At times I found his explanations to be a bit too facile “Yeah woman are treated as playthings, but the men are sort of jerks too!” seemed overly simple and this book was missing a larger cultural critique but as it stands I did enjoy it.
Continuing to enjoy these. We’re now more in the 30st, post WWI but before WWII. Maisie gets in some trouble with people following her around, has to ferret some things out. I like how these novels progress from one to the next, it’s not the same story over and over and the main character learns things.