A thriller with many admirable qualities, but not quite as clever as it thinks it is (and about 100 pages too long ...)
There is a lot to like in "Death Stalks Kettle Street." Starting with the "Midsomer Murders" vibe, as residents of a suburban street begin to die in increasingly implausible "accidents." Proceeding through a meta-narrative that toys shamelessly with genre tropes, and with the reader, going so far as to have a character who is giving mini-lectures on the classic elements of the cosy mystery, even as they are happening. And, not least, the very oddest of detecting odd couples -- a reclusive artist with OCD and a librarian with Cerebral Palsy. There are some brave choices, and some interesting reflections on our almost-two century long love affair with murder and mayhem for pleasure. And for some of the time, it works.
Except when it doesn't.
By about page 275, I felt that, in the immortal words of Jane Austen, it had delighted us long enough. I wanted to know whodunnit, but I was beginning to feel that my patience had already been sorely tested by long sections of padding, unnecessary repetition and a red herring so obvious that even the Blessed John Barnaby would have dismissed it before the first commercial break.
But, more important ... in my opinion, "Death Stalks Kettle Street" fails to answer the one crucial question that its brave choices and interesting reflections force us to ask: what is it for?
I think, if you are going to play with meta-narrative in a text, you have to make the pay-off for all that navel-gazing serious and satisfying. Say something that resonates about the texts you are deconstructing AND about the readers of those texts. And I don't think Bowen gives us that pay-off: six innocent people die for our entertainment, a perpetrator is identified, and a motive is given, but I didn't feel that the murders, the perpetrator, or the motive were enhanced by all that philosophizing.
There is a lot to like in "Death Stalks Kettle Street." Starting with the "Midsomer Murders" vibe, as residents of a suburban street begin to die in increasingly implausible "accidents." Proceeding through a meta-narrative that toys shamelessly with genre tropes, and with the reader, going so far as to have a character who is giving mini-lectures on the classic elements of the cosy mystery, even as they are happening. And, not least, the very oddest of detecting odd couples -- a reclusive artist with OCD and a librarian with Cerebral Palsy. There are some brave choices, and some interesting reflections on our almost-two century long love affair with murder and mayhem for pleasure. And for some of the time, it works.
Except when it doesn't.
By about page 275, I felt that, in the immortal words of Jane Austen, it had delighted us long enough. I wanted to know whodunnit, but I was beginning to feel that my patience had already been sorely tested by long sections of padding, unnecessary repetition and a red herring so obvious that even the Blessed John Barnaby would have dismissed it before the first commercial break.
But, more important ... in my opinion, "Death Stalks Kettle Street" fails to answer the one crucial question that its brave choices and interesting reflections force us to ask: what is it for?
I think, if you are going to play with meta-narrative in a text, you have to make the pay-off for all that navel-gazing serious and satisfying. Say something that resonates about the texts you are deconstructing AND about the readers of those texts. And I don't think Bowen gives us that pay-off: six innocent people die for our entertainment, a perpetrator is identified, and a motive is given, but I didn't feel that the murders, the perpetrator, or the motive were enhanced by all that philosophizing.
