In the depths of the U.S. Library of Congress toil thousands of researchers, chasing down obsessions, breakthroughs, and new contributions to human wisdom. But when amateur D.C. sleuth Annabel Reed-Smith enters this stately American institution, she discovers a hornet’s nest of intrigue and murder.Anyway, the book sounded interesting enough, so I gave it a try. I liked the descriptions of the Library of Congress. It is my dream to visit it someday, and I'm somewhat bitter that no one in my family thought of taking me there on my 3 trips to Washington DC as a child/teen. It sounded like Ms. Truman did a good job of bringing the LoC and its myriad rooms and researchers to life, and it made me really want to visit ASAP. I also liked the Columbus/Mesoamerican angle, as that is my heritage. The protagonist, Annabel, owns a gallery of pre-Columbian art and is researching the possible diaries of Bartolome de las Casas, an actually real person I am shocked to learn exists and had a very interesting life. This book says he was on the ships with Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus in English) and wrote diaries about his experiences, but there is no mention of that in his Wikipedia article, so Truman probably made it up.
After a renowned scholar is bludgeoned to death among the scholarly stacks, an ambitious TV reporter links the case to the heist of a Spanish painting from a Miami museum and a killing in Mexico City. Annabel suspects that buried in the Library are secrets some people will do anything to keep silent–the secret of a rich man’s ambition, a researcher’s disappearance, and a mysterious diary of Christopher Columbus’s journey written five hundred years ago.
This mystery was ok, but the writing was pretty bad and cliche. The dialogue was wooden and unnatural, I had that started-a-series-in-the-middle feeling of confusion, and the women characters sounded like a mediocre male writer had written them. Lots of telling but not showing. There was more character development in the Wikipedia article I linked to above. In an attempt to flesh out the characters, there was this whole thing about Annabel's older husband needing a total knee replacement that he kept putting off because of male stubbornness and illogicalness, and in the end he had the surgery anyway. Why. No one cares. The first/main victim was an egotistical, sexist jerk who deserved to be killed. I felt bad for the archival equipment what was used for the murder weapon, though. *archivist feels*
There were some subplots who only served to obfuscate the main one. I really felt that the angle of a possible hidden treasure map on the back of an old painting was promising and interesting, but I don't think it went anywhere, because I don't remember what happened. It was attached to the second most important plot, that of the guy who stole the painting in Miami. Again, no one cared. There was another subplot about one of the female workers at the LoC having a stalker and getting heavy breathing calls. It ended up having nothing to do with the murder, and it was "resolved" by a higher up having the offending employee (who outranked her) apologize to her! Like WTF!! That's not how you handle sexual harassment in the workplace!!!
The ending was pretty abrupt. The killer revealed herself in a really stupid way. Publisher's Weekly agrees with me: "A clue to the murderer is tipped clumsily; the discovery of the killer's identity comes as something of an anticlimax..." (on the Amazon page linked to above). The body count was maybe about 3 people? idk, I wasn't invested. They called churros a DONUT, you guys. A @#%*ING DONUT!!!! Every time I think about it I am filled with Mexican rage. Ese culerismo, te digo.
I'd say read this only if you're going to be trapped somewhere, like on a plane, and the only other books are the Fifty Shades of Gray series or equivalent.
Score: 3 out of 5 stars
Read in: late January-early February
From: free books rack at the library
Format: paperback
Status: put back on the free books rack at the library
No comments:
Post a Comment