Book 1 in the China Bayles series
AUTHOR: Susan Wittig Albert
PUBLISHED: 1992
CATEGORY: Adult
GENRE: Cozy Mystery
PREMISE: A former lawyer who owns a shop gets involved when an apparent suicide of a close friend is in fact a murder.
MY REVIEW: So, here's my weekly read the through the library find. I...wasn't that wild about this one. To be honest, it's entirely me. There's nothing really WRONG about the book. It was just a bunch of little things that bugged me that kept me from enjoying it.
For one...it's pretty dated, particularly in attitude. I can absolutely tell a middle-aged white conservative lady wrote this. And no, there's nothing wrong with being a middle-aged white conservative lady. But it did mean that I spent a majority of the book wanting to bang my head on the wall at some of the nonsense going on in the book. For instance there's a conversation about guns that makes me cringe. I'm trying to keep in mind that this woman is from Texas and she wrote this pre-Columbine and not in this day and age where there's a shooting every damn week. But it did make me groan nonetheless (I'm pro-gun control. No, I don't want to take away your precious guns, but you can't honestly tell me you need to take a gun into a freaking Target).
Then there's the air of judgement that tended to come every time China spoke about someone who didn't behave "appropriately". This someone was almost always a woman. I also can't help but notice how strange it is that everyone in this town (a college town, mind you, not some small Stars Hollow ville place) was white. Literally, everyone. Oh, and don't get me started on the treatment of the revelation that the victim was a lesbian. It made it out to be some scandalous thing, and then the author did the preference bs. Being LGBT is not a preference/lifestyle choice people. Being LGBT is a part of who that person is. They do not choose it. Basically, this book was trying to be feminist (or what the author thought feminism was at the time), but really it kind of failed. Miserably. That's not even going into the fact that the main character BURNS EVIDENCE AT THE END. What self-respecting former lawyer burns evidence? I don't care if you're trying to protect someones image, you don't freaking do that.
Now, this series is still going on apparently, so for all I know the author has changed stuff and fixed the problematic things (people can change their viewpoints, it happens). However, I don't particularly care enough to find out as other then getting annoyed at the bad feminism, I was pretty bored through out this really predictable mystery.
WHO SHOULD READ: conservative cozy mystery fans
MY RATING: Two and a half out of Five yawns
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