User Profile

Note: This applies to the US Kindle version.

And an odd version it is - hence the two stars. Is the book really by Kerry Greenwood? I wonder.

Lately I've had a grand ol' time reading through the Phryne Fisher mysteries. Despite a certain curiosity as to why vol. 1-3, then 10-18, but not 4-9 is available to me in the Kindle store, I've very much enjoyed the books. Some are better, some are worse, but all are entertaining.

Until this. Until a book which appears SO MUCH out of character that I wonder if the author is really the author. Suddenly, when a discreet doctor is needed for a female victim, Dr. Mac isn't even mentioned. A sister so effectively used in the previous book is suddenly ... not even mentioned.

Let's ignore the suddenly horrendous typography and layout, which made the Kindle book near unreadable. Let's skip the out-of-character behaviour of the main characters.

The plot. What about the PLOT? "What about the plot?" I hear you ask. Yes. What about it? Where was the plot? I shan't spoil, but honestly I am tempted to retitle this volume: "The Chase for the Itinerant Plot".

This one was a shock to my system after the lovely #13 ("The Castlemain Murders") and the absolutely delightful #14 ("Death by Water").

Again: was this REALLY written by Kerry Greenwood? Ya could'v fooled me.

Let's dispense with the "This is crap literature!" crowd right away: you won't like me or what I write.

Dan Brown did, with "The DaVinci Code", create a mystery based around old symbols and myths, meshed together in what was quite a fun "little" book. There's nothing to be gained what so ever from claiming "It's not true!". No, it isn't. It's fantasy, and it was well done.

"Inferno", on the other hand, is simply one more of the same. Nothing wrong with that, but the mystery isn't mysterious any more, even tho the symbols are as complex and the clues as obscure. It is one, long list of complex and obscure.

The problem - the very REAL problem - for me was the philosophical claptrap. You might want to avoid the next paragraph.


Highly intelligent people. They suffer so much. Schools bore them; society wish to imprison them in politically correct muck. Society even HATE them for being, well, smart, and good with math.

Not really. We don't understand "intelligence", and we don't really hate those who think differently - unless, of course, they are artists. Could someone explain why a darned clever person would let ANYTHING bore her?

Rant over - but "Inferno" contains two supremely intelligent people; so intelligent that they have insights the rest of us cannot fathom, and since we cannot fathom how RIGHT they are, they have to act without asking. Paraphrased: "Would you in cold blood murder an innocent child to save another innocent child?". The big, moral question of the book. Added to a mix of Transhumanism (that's the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity" to quote one of them. The rest of us don't have daring, courageous etc aspirations), evolution, politics on the right hand side of things, and some truly FLAT characters .... no. Sorry, Dan. It's soup, and it isn't even very tasty.


But mainly it bother me that the book could have been split in two: one travel handbook for the symbolically inclined; one, thin, very thin, mystery.