Sun 5 Jan 2014
BERNIE LEE – Murder at Musket Beach. Donald A. Fine, hardcover, 1990. Worldwide Library, paperback, November 1991.
Here is an example, if one is desired, of a book that I cannot imagine will interest any fan of the old-fashioned detective story one iota. It is the first mystery adventure of a husband-and-wife sleuthing duo named Tony and Pat Pratt, and even though there is a second promised, I can promise you that I will not be reading another.
Tony Pratt is a mystery writer, Pat Pratt is a financial consultant, and together they find a body on the beach. This is the interesting part. It goes downhill from here.
There are two suspects (three if you count the mysterious behavior of the policeman investigating the case, behavior never satisfactorily explained except there does have to be some mystery in a detective story, one supposes, doesn’t there?). There is one clue, and the culprit can’t imagine how or why he managed to drop it right there next to the body.
The victim was in real estate, it is learned, a guru is trying to buy some local land upon which to build his commune, and over and over again it is carefully explained to us that this might be the reason for the murder. [WARNING: Plot Alert.] It is.
In other words, this is a mystery for the feeble-minded. It’s not the writing that is so bad; it’s the complete absence of a plot.
Bibliographic Update: There were, in fact, two more books in the series: Murder Without Reservation (1991) and Murder Takes Two (1992).
January 6th, 2014 at 4:51 pm
Glad I missed this one. You would think if they were going to write a mystery they would include a plot and a mystery, but sad to say I’ve read far too many like this.
This is what I mean when I refer to television series plotting, a superficial approach to mystery and character, and a plot that has little or nothing to it.
January 6th, 2014 at 10:23 pm
Pat Pratt?
Really?
Sounds like this one took a Pratt(sic) fall.
January 6th, 2014 at 11:45 pm
Yes, really. The choice of names must have been deliberate, but for the life of me, I can’t think of any good reason why.
January 8th, 2014 at 1:28 pm
I never made a habit of writing reviews as negative as this one, and for a fairly obvious reason. First of all, I’ve always screened the book I’ve chosen to read ahead of time, and if it turned out I was wrong, I decided quite a while ago that there was no reason I had to finish a book, once started.
Reading my comments now, I don’t know why I happened to make my way to the end of this one. I certainly wouldn’t today. (Along side my bed I have a stack of books that I’ve made it through the first two or three chapters at bedtime, turned out the light and started another book the next day.)