Book 114 - "The Various Haunts of Men" by Susan Hill
Saturday, November 26th, 2005 22:47![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeRead for the Motley Food UK book club, and ultimately a disappointment after a good start. So far only two of us have reported back and neither of us is likely to read any more books in the Serrailler series. Here is the review I posted to the MF book club board:
Well - I wasn't expecting that! A surprise ending, but I was still disappointed. I started off liking the book, but it annoyed me more and more the further I read.
After suspecting just about all the characters (Chris Deerbon - possibly a would-be pathologist who hated having to settle for being a GP, Ivo Serrailler - supposedly a flying doctor in Australia, but maybe that is just his family's cover story to hide the shame of him being kicked out of medical school), I did finally come round to suspecting the actual murderer.
I found Freya increasingly irritating, with her stalkerish behaviour - mooning outside Simon's flat and feeling sick whenever he talked to another woman. And just how stupid was she to go out for a drink with a man she already suspected of murder, and then tell him where she lived!. Simon was a cardboard character, distant and brooding, waiting for true love to unlock his inner feelings. He didn't ring true at all - I think he escaped from a Mills and Boon novel. In fact, the Serraillers are a weird and unlikely family altogether, and I don't think I want to read any more books about them.
One of the problems I had with this book was that I was never sure how old a lot of the characters were. I assumed that Aidan was fairly young, about the same age as Cat and Chris, so I had discounted him as the subject of Angela's crush. Another problem was that it was quite obviously going to be the the start of an ongoing series (although I thought the series would be about Freya) so there was a lot of extraneous stuff about the Serraillers and the town and it didn't feel finished. I hope that in the next book the author doesn't feel the need to tell her readers about Nathan's ugly face but endearing smile in every single chapter! I got it the first time, and the second, AND THE THIRD!
Well - I wasn't expecting that! A surprise ending, but I was still disappointed. I started off liking the book, but it annoyed me more and more the further I read.
After suspecting just about all the characters (Chris Deerbon - possibly a would-be pathologist who hated having to settle for being a GP, Ivo Serrailler - supposedly a flying doctor in Australia, but maybe that is just his family's cover story to hide the shame of him being kicked out of medical school), I did finally come round to suspecting the actual murderer.
I found Freya increasingly irritating, with her stalkerish behaviour - mooning outside Simon's flat and feeling sick whenever he talked to another woman. And just how stupid was she to go out for a drink with a man she already suspected of murder, and then tell him where she lived!. Simon was a cardboard character, distant and brooding, waiting for true love to unlock his inner feelings. He didn't ring true at all - I think he escaped from a Mills and Boon novel. In fact, the Serraillers are a weird and unlikely family altogether, and I don't think I want to read any more books about them.
One of the problems I had with this book was that I was never sure how old a lot of the characters were. I assumed that Aidan was fairly young, about the same age as Cat and Chris, so I had discounted him as the subject of Angela's crush. Another problem was that it was quite obviously going to be the the start of an ongoing series (although I thought the series would be about Freya) so there was a lot of extraneous stuff about the Serraillers and the town and it didn't feel finished. I hope that in the next book the author doesn't feel the need to tell her readers about Nathan's ugly face but endearing smile in every single chapter! I got it the first time, and the second, AND THE THIRD!
