Mon 30 Aug 2010
Reviews by L. J. Roberts
M. R. HALL – The Disappeared. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, December 2009; trade paperback, April 2011. Macmillan, UK, hardcover/softcover, January, 2010.
Genre: Licensed investigator. Leading character: Jenny Cooper; 2nd in series. Setting: England.
First Sentence: During her six months as coroner for the Severn Vale District, Jenny Cooper had known only a handful of corpses remain unidentified for more than a day or two.
Coroner Jenny Cooper is contacted by the mother of a British Muslim student for a formal inquest on her son. He and his friend both disappeared from their college dorm rooms seven years ago. The authorities claim they went to Afghanistan for terrorist training and failed to do a thorough investigation.
Jenny also has a unidentified Jane Doe in the morgue whose body is stolen but traces of radioactivity left behind. How are the two cases linked and why are the authorities trying so hard to suppress the inquest?
It is very difficult when you really like an author’s first book, yet find their second book so disappointing. What worked well in Hall’s first book, The Coroner (reviewed here ), seemed to come completely undone in this second one.
The protagonist, Jenny Cooper, moved from being a woman finding strength in spite of her issues, to an insipid woman influenced and overwhelmed by everyone; her son, her clerk, her sometimes boyfriend, the police and some rather mysterious lawyer.
Rather than being sympathetic, I found her annoying. At times, her emotional problems notwithstanding, her behavior was so unconscionable it wasn’t even excusable by being fictional. None of the characters were fully developed. Worse yet, I found I didn’t care about or feel connected to any of them.
The only exception was the boy’s mother, Mrs. Jamal, and she was poorly used by the story. There was a sense of place but not strong enough to give me a visual sense of where the story occurred. The author does have a good ear for dialogue but that’s rather damning with faint praise.
The plot seemed to plod on with little sense of tension or suspense. Even the courtroom scenes, so effectively done in her first book, lacked punch or luster. The whole thing felt as though it was a collection news-story ideas (Muslims, terrorists, conspiracies) looking for a cohesive book plot.
The deal-breaker for me was the particularly annoying “you’ll have to read-the-next-book” ending. More than one author has lost me for doing that and Mr. Hall may well be the newest on that list.
The book just doesn’t ever quite work. I did read it all the way through and I don’t mean to say it was absolutely awful; but it wasn’t good either. I shall have to give serious thought as to whether I continue reading this series.
Rating: Poor.
August 30th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
That’s quite a comedown, LJ, from a rating of “Very Good” for the first book to a “Poor” for this one.
In baseball there’s something called the sophomore jinx, in which a player who has a tremendous rookie season all of a sudden can’t buy a hit (batter) or can’t get anyone out (pitcher).
Maybe that’s what happened here. More effort was put into the first one than the second, the author not realizing himself what it was that made the first one work.
But making the ending of a mystery novel a cliffhanger almost never works. And even when it does, I still don’t like it.
August 30th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
I’ll have to check out that first one. The series is new to me.
August 30th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
The sophomore jinx has come to be often discussed by music critics too. An unsigned performer or band have spent their whole life writing their unheard songs. They’re signed to a contract, and use all of–or the very best of–those sings–to appear on that first album. Then the artist has only a few months to write new ones that live up to the standard of those they saved up over years and years.
It seems to me that the same thing could especially happen to an author whose first book has strong autobiographical elements…
August 31st, 2010 at 6:26 pm
There is another name for the sophmore jinx — it’s the one book wonder.
Too early to see if that is the case here, but this certainly sounds like one to be a bit wary of.
Sadly I can’t think if many cases where the sophmore jinx was followed by brilliant third outing. Too often the whole thing just goes downhill from there.