Sigrid Harald is a detective, like her dead father, but as one of the few women in a male-dominated field she has to tread carefully. When a university professor is murdered with a cup of poisoned coffee Sigrid has an unprecedented opportunity, but working out who poisoned the coffee, and why, is far from easy.
This is the first in a series and, first published in 1982, has not aged particularly well. This in itself wouldn’t be so much of a problem in the writing was more polished or the plot less straight forward, but in the absence of either of these attributes One Coffee With was flat and disappointing, particularly because I’ve enjoyed other of Maron’s works previously. However, the characters were well drawn, the portrayal of academic life was interesting, and there was a lot of ground work laid for the series as a whole.
While some authors put their best work into their first novels, others become more accomplished with practice. In hopes that this is the case here, I’ll try the next Harald novel, but with caution. - Alex
No comments:
Post a Comment