Saturday, July 01, 2006

Martha Grimes

The Old Wine Shades. As usual, a fun convoluted mystery with a familiar and funny cast and a hazy ending. The usual children and dogs are found, as well as a bit of vague quantum physics and wine drinking. I think she is a little sick of her own series, and they are starting to repeat themselves. But the thing is, Martha Grimes when not at her best is still phenomenal; I really enjoyed this book-completely farfetched as it was. I loved the parts about plays within a plays, and nested stories like Russian dolls. Grimes has a gift for hilarious dialogue and dry (or not) humor that makes me snort in public. But she's still writing the same book over and over again; it's a book I like, but I know she can do so much better. My guess is she's continuing to write the Jury novels for a steady paycheck, but it's the non-Jury books that she pours her heart into now (Foul Matter, Hotel Paradise, etc...). It is fairly endearing that she pokes fun at herself with the two pot-boiler novelists that are bit players in the Jury books.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, you're reading Mom books

gwen said...

wow, someone is reading this! anyway, what if mom is reading gwen books?