Our bloom is gone. We are the fruit thereof.

The story of young womans murder at Durham University, starts the uncovering of secrets and cruelties, youngsters indiscretions, abuses by the privileged.

The plot develops in two times with the arrival of Emily Brabents to university and the investigation of her murder by DI Erica Martin, who is also the best character in the story because she is interesting and well rounded, but the plot does not help her, it is too convoluted and disjointed, it wants to be too many things and comment on too many social ills to be focused enough on a satisfactory conclusion of the story.

There is a feminist message trying to arise out of the story, but it is lost with a character that was so confused fused sexualy and mentally that politics of any kind became a mute point, then you have the counselor of the university as the most negligent and dislikable person I could imagine, making the most bissar speaches about sexualiy based on her culture and personal biases, and is never really confronted by any one, or questioned properly for her negligence.

In the end a book with lots of potential gets lost in its own convoluted message instead of focusing more on what could have been and excellent procedural with Di Martin at the helm.

The readers ensemble was excellent and gave the characters more definition.

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9 people found this helpful

Good tale. But the writer needs to find her style

Any additional comments?

This is an interesting story, and as such it kept me engaged. The characters were reasonably well drawn. It was however, spoiled a little by the author seemingly trying too hard. It was mostly written in the straightforward fashion of modern crime fiction, but every now and again it launched away into flowery language which was quite incongruous. Perhaps this was in attempt to do some kind if justice to the literary tradition of the highly respected university City in which it is set. I formed the impression that this author is not yet confidentially established in her style. Susan Hill does 'high brow flowery' very well. This author, not so much. Her straightforward style was good and, in my opinion, she should decide which direction she wants to go in and work on that. Regarding narration, some narrators were very good, some made errors 'he instead of she', that sort of thing. The accents voiced for Jones and Martin were the same, yet Martin was said to be from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, having only recently moved to Durham for a new post. Her's should have been a Geordie accent, but it really wasn't. I guess many listeners won't find this an issue, but for those aware that people from the North East of England do not all have one generic accent, it is distracting.

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3 people found this helpful