As I said a couple of days ago, the second Castle Knoll Files book isn’t quite as good as the first. It’s a fun enough read, but it feels slight as a work of detective fiction, compared to, say, Christie or Rowling, the main crime writers I’ve read recently.

And there are some incongruities. The writer is American, though she has lived in the UK for years, and it shows. Especially in the parts that are written as being a diary from 1967 (the main narrative is present day). Modern terms are used in ways that they wouldn’t have been back then. No examples come to mind right now, but I might update this if they do.

And there are occasions of dialogue that reads more like exposition. People just don’t talk like that.

Apart from those relatively minor points, I enjoyed it a lot, and will doubtless get the third book, which is due out in April. I wonder both for how long Perrin will be able to keep coming up with titles that match the style; and for how long our intrepid investigator, Annie Adams, will be able to find cold cases in great-aunt’s notes.