Sat 7 Jan 2017
A Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: ED McBAIN – Mary, Mary.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
ED McBAIN – Mary, Mary. Matthew Hope #10. Warner Books, hardcover, 1993; paperback, May 1994.
Matthew Hope, hero of McBain’s “second” series, is a criminal lawyer in Calusa, Florida. He is asked to defend a retired schoolteacher by a British former student of hers in a particularly heinous crime involving the killing, mutilation, and burial in her garden of three young girls. The accused is a prickly, callous, foul-mouthed soul completely at odds with the image her past would indicate, and denies everything. Hope believes her (he won’t defend people believes guilty) and takes the case.
I was disappointed. I was unable to believe in a number of the characters, very much including quite contrary Mary, the schoolmarm, whose transition from caring teacher to her present persona wasn’t convincingly explained. There were too many things let unestablished for the denouement to be credible, and I thought the many, many courtroom scenes were egregiously padded.
Did I like anything? Well, McBain still writes competent, spare prose, at least when he’s not filling ten pages in a row with one line paragraphs of courtroom testimony. And that’s all. If you’re a Hope fan, you will probably want to try it for yourself. Otherwise, abandon Hope, all ye who enter here.
January 7th, 2017 at 6:39 pm
Not my favorite series or individual entry in this series, though McBain is almost always worth reading, and the Hope series had its highlights.
January 7th, 2017 at 9:53 pm
Not being a fan of police procedurals in general, I’ve read one, maybe two, of McBain’s 87th Precinct books, no more than that.
I sampled the Hope series a couple of times, but evidently nothing caught my fancy, because one or two again were all I read. There were 13 of them in all.
I’ve always done better with his non-series books. I do like his long terse dialogue scenes.
January 8th, 2017 at 8:29 am
If anything, Barry was too kind. I’ve read a lot of Hunter/McBain (etc.) books – over 90 – and this was easily the worst. The final solution is such an outrageous cheat that (SPOILER ALERT) Ronald Knox and S. S. Van Dine are turning over in their graves – (WARNING! DO NOT READ WHAT FOLLOWS IF YOU EVER INTEND TO READ THIS BOOK, WHICH YOU SHOULDN’T BECAUSE IT SUCKS: a long lost, previously unmentioned identical twin! END WARNING).
January 8th, 2017 at 12:45 pm
A twin? Aargh. I wonder why McBain thought he could get away with such a trite and hackneyed solution.
After reading Barry’s review and his unhappiness with the characters, I thought it was because McBain was trying to shoehorn the story into the title. All but the last of the Hope books were totle after fairy tales or nursery rhymes. In this case “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” but in the process making the change in Mary’s behavior incomprehensible.
1. Goldilocks (1977)
2. Rumpelstiltskin (1981)
3. Beauty and the Beast (1982)
4. Jack and the Beanstalk (1981)
5. Snow White and Rose Red (1985)
6. Cinderella (1986)
7. Puss in Boots (1987)
8. The House That Jack Built (1988)
9. Three Blind Mice (1990)
10. Mary, Mary (1982)
11. There Was a Little Girl (1994)
12. Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear (1996)
13. The Last Best Hope (1998)