Not sure I have ever read a book that goes so badly off the rails ... in the final 10 pages.
I was really enjoying this. Interesting interweaving of the stories in the two time-lines: Kate French, the "Martian Girl," one half of a late 1890s music hall mind-reading act, which starts off dodgy, and then becomes ever dodgier as we (and Kate) learn more about her partner Draper, and what might have happened to his previous partner. And modern day Jean Beckett, who is simultaneously conducting an affair with Coates, a very dodgy married man, and researching the Martian Girl (for a one-woman stage show. Or a novel. Or a stage show and a novel. Jean's ambitions are a flighty and poorly judged as her life choices ...)
The nasty characters are satisfyingly nasty. The nice characters (and here, let me give a shout-out to Kate French herself, and -- in the modern story stream -- Anderson, the part-time private detective-cum-sheep farmer. And his three-legged dog) are true-hearted and spunky, and put up with a lot of grief from the nasty characters. You learn a lot about late Victorian music halls acts, and their promotion. Jean is an idiot, but her dangerous denial about the crazy Coates feels real, and her journey to solve the mystery of Kate's fate feels satisfying.
But then ... oh then. That, in its own way is a spoiler, I'm afraid, and it's hard to see how I can say why the ending is so disappointing without indulging in nitty-gritty, chapter and verse spoilers. It felt arbitrary. It felt like the author thought he was doing something very clever, that pulled it all together, and IMHO, it did not.
I was really enjoying this. Interesting interweaving of the stories in the two time-lines: Kate French, the "Martian Girl," one half of a late 1890s music hall mind-reading act, which starts off dodgy, and then becomes ever dodgier as we (and Kate) learn more about her partner Draper, and what might have happened to his previous partner. And modern day Jean Beckett, who is simultaneously conducting an affair with Coates, a very dodgy married man, and researching the Martian Girl (for a one-woman stage show. Or a novel. Or a stage show and a novel. Jean's ambitions are a flighty and poorly judged as her life choices ...)
The nasty characters are satisfyingly nasty. The nice characters (and here, let me give a shout-out to Kate French herself, and -- in the modern story stream -- Anderson, the part-time private detective-cum-sheep farmer. And his three-legged dog) are true-hearted and spunky, and put up with a lot of grief from the nasty characters. You learn a lot about late Victorian music halls acts, and their promotion. Jean is an idiot, but her dangerous denial about the crazy Coates feels real, and her journey to solve the mystery of Kate's fate feels satisfying.
But then ... oh then. That, in its own way is a spoiler, I'm afraid, and it's hard to see how I can say why the ending is so disappointing without indulging in nitty-gritty, chapter and verse spoilers. It felt arbitrary. It felt like the author thought he was doing something very clever, that pulled it all together, and IMHO, it did not.
