Preface: I love Robert Thorogood’s series, The Marlow Murder Club. The characters are quirky and eccentric. (Or maybe I just wish I had a river to swim in outside my door.) This is the first time I have read one of his books on Kindle. I’ve listened to the “Marlow” books via Audible.

This review contains spoilers. And I really felt like including quite a bit of snark after my 3 am adventure with this text. So, I wrote it here instead of on Goodreads.

3 am. Wind blowing. Blinds rattling at the windows.

I got out of bed and looked outside to see how the deck and pond umbrellas were faring, and decided to run outside and reel in both of them.

Returned to the house. Climbed back into bed.

Eyes wide open.

<Sigh>

Ok. I decided to start a new book on Kindle.

This seems to be murder mystery summer for me, so having finished Book 3 or 4 (I have forgotten which) in another series by another writer, I chose Book 1 in a new series. And snuggled into the covers expecting the comfort of a cozy mystery and a segue back to sleep. Thus began my journey into A Meditation on Murder.

Prologue. 

The screaming begins in the prologue. 

It goes on for 3 pages of my Kindle edition. 

It is presented to the reader like this: 

“It was half an hour later when the screaming started.”

I read that sentence several times, and my response was the same each time. 

“The screaming” felt like a character introduced into the text.

Not only does “the screaming” go on for 3 pages of the text (yes, in a Kindle), but it doesn’t stop. 

The screaming begins (as stated above) and then the writer has two paragraphs describing where some of the characters are and what they are doing–some finishing breakfast, some already wearing robes, and one sitting and sewing. We are also given the description and name of a structure where the screaming seems to be located and a brief idea of the materials used to build that structure. 

So “the screaming” doesn’t seem to imply a need for urgent action. At least, not at first.

The inserted descriptive material comes before “a second scream joined the first” and the person sewing [finds] herself hurrying toward the screaming. (Apparently, she has no volition?) The sewing person is joined in running toward the screaming by a “tanned and taut handyman” and a description of what he is wearing. Note: this guy has a tool belt, and despite his obvious volition, he can’t seem to recall what tools are hanging said toolbelt.

The screaming is still apparently going on during all of this description and a subsequent scrabble at the door of the location of the screaming. This location doesn’t seem to have a door handle. Sewing person and handyman finally enter the location of the screaming and sewing person also begins to scream.

This scene is set after the first character the reader encounters manages to exit his bed and dress, but not before the reader learns that he considers wearing a watch a form of enslavement, the bed he steps from is “mahogany, Belle Epoque,” the floor he steps on is imported from Thailand, and the mirror he sees himself in is “gilt-framed, Regency.”

So. Many. Asides. 

And of course there is this: “he couldn’t hide from his past forever, could he?”–pondered while he drinks green tea, and (spoiler alert) he is the cause of all the screaming that continues as the Prologue comes to an end. He is the murder victim.

My own screaming began as I turned the page and encountered Chapter One.

Note: I am wide awake now, and I’m irritated.

In Chapter One, we are introduced to the detective. 

Consider this description of Inspector Richard Poole’s mental reflections, having been awakened by a frog croaking outside his window in the early morning hours. The frog is croaking, we are told, “inexplicably.”

Hang on. The very next paragraph tells us where Inspector Poole is living. Are frogs “inexplicable” on a tropical island? At night or in the morning? And don’t frogs usually croak without giving an explanation for doing so?

The writer goes on to tell us: “But then, Richard thought to himself, this was entirely typical” (the frog, I assume) “because if he wasn’t being assaulted by frog choruses in the middle of the night, it was torrential downpours like a troupe of Gene Kellys tap-dancing on his tin roof; or it was whole dunes of sand being blown across his floorboards by the hot Caribbean wind.”

Did you get all that? I’m still back on Gene Kelly tap-dancing, myself. And that inexplicable frog isn’t so inexplicable after all, hm? Maybe just inexplicable because the frog is missing the rest of the chorus?

And then we have a description of the humidity–illustrated by a box of crisps mailed to Richard by his mother.

“The one time he’d received a precious box of Walker’s crisps in the post from his mother, the crisps had gone soggy within minutes of him opening any of the packets.”

Ok. That’s all I needed to tell me the humid air renders potato chips soggy moments after they are opened. Ah, but this writer really wants to hammer that idea home:

“It was like some exquisite punishment that had been specifically designed to torture him. The insides of each packet contained perfect crisps right up to but not including [?] the precise moment he opened the packet and tried to eat one, at which point they immediately went stale in the sultry tropical air.”

An old colleague of mine once had the temerity to suggest “Dickens was paid by the word. That’s why his books are so long!” Dickens, however, quite intentionally included descriptions and asides. Consider how Dickens set the mood for Bleak House with a full page describing the fog/smog that becomes a character in the text. It’s everywhere in that text–smothering, stifling, and ever present, obscuring the landscape and the identities of the people in Dickens’s fictional world. It’s relevant. It sets the mood. It becomes a character that has real meaning and importance in the text.

This packet of crisps is no relevant character.

In fact, we quickly abandon them and are asked to consider the Inspector’s nightwear. Apparently, he wears Marks and Spencer [pajamas] and kicks his sheets into a frenzied ball before he manages to get out of bed. 

At least the murder victim in the Prologue emerged from bed with a bit of style.

The screaming from the Prologue and this introduction to the Inspector would have caused me to fling my Kindle across the room if it had been a paperback book. But I persevered. It was 3:30 am, and I was wide awake. 

I pondered: how to sort out what is important from what I really don’t need to know? 

Let’s review: Ok, the Inspector wears pajamas to bed on a tropical island which doesn’t seem like a logical choice to make given the “slick of sweat” described just before the name brand of the pajamas appears in the text. (Given that illogical choice, can he actually solve a crime?)

The guy killed in the Prologue seemed entitled and full of himself without the branding of his home furnishings. (The watch commentary and the lush, manicured lawns of the hotel he owns might have been enough.)

Where is the writer’s editor in all of this?

Ah, but there is a lizard. And I am very interested in Harry, the lizard. He’s unobtrusive and he lived in Richard’s home before Richard moved in. He has squatter’s rights. Richard  has named the lizard Harry. He is bright green. But I’m worried about Richard. This creature he has taken the time to name is now the subject of a darker thought: he ponders getting “rid of the bloody creature.”

Alas. I shall never get to know any more about Harry. Or the “inexplicable” (yet entirely explicable) early morning frog. Who also needs a name.

Why? Because even if I could convince myself that things will get better after this Prologue and beginning of a first chapter, consider Richard’s introduction to his colleague who merely wants to ask for his lunch order:

“Camille was bright, lithe, and one of the most naturally attractive women on the Island, but as Richard looked up from his reverie–irked at the interruption–he frowned like a barn owl who’d just received some bad news.”

I wish the writer would decide if this is a murder mystery or a lengthy descriptive discourse with a few animal motifs. 

So I’m left with this conclusion:

The lizard and the frog should write their own murder mystery. I think they could find room in it for a frowning barn owl. It could begin with an “inexplicable” wind at 3 am.