lastblossom reviewed Holmes, Marple & Poe by Brian Stitts
With a quick pace and multiple cases, this book feels like watching a television police procedural.
This is my first time reading any James Patterson, but the title did its job thoroughly in catching my attention, so props there. I'm led to believe that the writing style of short chapters and concurrent threads is standard for Patterson, so any fans of his work will be right at home here. I was also zero percent surprised to discover the co-writer Brian Stitts also works in television, since this entire book feels like reading a television show. Prose is straightforward, reading in some places like stage directions on a script, and the pacing felt like a modern police procedural, complete with several ongoing mysteries and a light touch of personal lives from our three leads to keep the engine moving. Even the end of the book feels like a season finale stinger. The mysteries are all interesting, but this isn't a solve-along book, so results reveal themselves in …
This is my first time reading any James Patterson, but the title did its job thoroughly in catching my attention, so props there. I'm led to believe that the writing style of short chapters and concurrent threads is standard for Patterson, so any fans of his work will be right at home here. I was also zero percent surprised to discover the co-writer Brian Stitts also works in television, since this entire book feels like reading a television show. Prose is straightforward, reading in some places like stage directions on a script, and the pacing felt like a modern police procedural, complete with several ongoing mysteries and a light touch of personal lives from our three leads to keep the engine moving. Even the end of the book feels like a season finale stinger. The mysteries are all interesting, but this isn't a solve-along book, so results reveal themselves in a more Conan Doyle style than a Christie one. A handful of minor details that don't pertain to the mysteries feel a bit jarring (Marple knows not to refer to a Korean woman by her first name because it's culturally insensitive, but does not call her by her job title, which would be most ideal; A haute cuisine dinner menu includes "ferns" instead of "fiddleheads"). I think my only real complaint is that my biggest mystery remains entirely unsolved: Why aren't they Holmes, Marple, and Dupin? And why hasn't anyone inside the book asked that too?
Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for an advance copy. All thoughts in this review are my own!