Pub – DaneCobain.com

Daphne du Maurier – My Cousin Rachel | Review

Title: My Cousin Rachel

Author: Daphne du Maurier

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 322

Rating: 2/5

Daphne du Maurier – My Cousin Rachel

I had high hopes for this after enjoying Rebecca, but I can’t help but feel as though du Maurier is a one trick pony after reading this. It was pretty much the same book, but without the successful execution, and that made it a bit of a slog from start to finish. With Rebecca, I couldn’t put it down. With this, I had to read 20 pages a night just to make sure that I picked it up, and even then it helped to put me to sleep.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the writing style. It’s more that the pacing is way off, to the point at which it’s hard to get interested in any of the characters because nothing seems to happen to them. There were a few great bits of prose, but they were interspersed with so much unnecessary drivel that instead of being the jewels in a crown, they were more like scraping up the crumbs from the bottom of a bag of crisps.

I wanted to love this one, and I went into it just assuming that I would do. After reading it, I’m hesitant to give du Maurier another go, although I do have Frenchman’s Creek and I enjoyed some of her short stories. This one, though, was a big disappointment, and it felt a bit like going to see a one hit wonder in concert and discovering that other than their one hit, they just play covers and sound like a pub band. Maybe my expectations were too high.

All in all, I say skip this one, especially if you’ve read du Maurier before and you weren’t too keen on her. I just hope this wasn’t her at her best because if it is, it doesn’t bode well for her others.

Daphne du Maurier

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Colin Dexter – The Daughters of Cain | Review

Title: The Daughters of Cain

Author: Colin Dexter

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 388

Rating: 8/10

Colin Dexter – The Daughters of Cain

This book is yet another instalment in Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse series, and so to a certain extent, you know what to expect here. I’ve never watched the television adaptation of the series, and so I can’t tell you how close the TV series and the books are in style and substance, but I will say that I’ve had a lot of fun reading these.

Now, I’ve read the Morse books out of order, but I don’t think it’s necessarily important. Certainly, this book works well as a standalone, and it’s fascinating to see the subtle shifts in power when Morse, Lewis and Chief Superintendent Strange are all working together to solve a murder case.

Here, they’re looking into the discovery of a corpse in a flat in North Oxford, which was discovered with a knife through its stomach. Unfortunately, at least to begin with, the police have no leads, and don’t even know what the motive might have been.

Colin Dexter

Luckily, with Morse on the case, you know that we’re going to get to the truth eventually, even if he does change his mind along the way as new evidence comes to light. Morse is a classic example of the armchair detective, the sort of copper who solves crimes whilst drinking pints in the pub at lunchtime, and who simply needs to go over the case in their head until the truth dawns on them.

And of course, there are plenty of twists and turns along the way, which keep you – as the reader – guessing about what happened right up until the very end. There’s also the inevitable second death, which seems to be a staple in the Morse books – Dexter builds up your expectations and convinces you that one of the characters was the guilty party, and then they get killed and you have to restart your hypotheses. But it works, and it makes for a truly gripping read that’s a lot of fun, especially if you’re already a fan of detective novels.

So what are you waiting for? The Morse books are lots of fun, and while this one doesn’t rank above any of the others, it’s still a good place to start.