I don't get it. There are very few books that leave me saying something like that; however, this is one of them. There is too much going on other than the main plot which I figure was the author's way of trying to work in twists and turns (or red herrings) that I was distracted from the main action. And this may offend the fans of this book, but no matter how smart a criminal is, there would be some evidence left even the police in the 1960s would have been able to find. I'll say it again ... I don't get it.

On passe un bon moment, c’est à mon sens un vrai page-turner, qui peut, cependant, souffrir de quelques longueurs. Une plume agréable et une fin stupéfiante raviront les fans de thrillers et de romans d’horreur.

Ma chronique : https://mellecupofteabouquine.wordpre...

Foi verdadeiro deleite ler este livro de Colleen McCullough.

Enquanto lia, enquanto mudava as páginas, parecia que o mundo parava a sua agitação e tudo ficava sereno, o que é bastante estranho já que se trata de uma história sobre uma investigação de um "serial killer" bastante perverso. Mas a escrita de Colleen é tão serena, tão madura, tão equilibrada que é como se nos conduzisse no meio de uma tormenta, protegidos numa bolha de tranquilidade. É puro prazer.

A história está muito bem construída, a trama bem enredada e os personagens, bem estruturados, são nos apresentados de uma forma muito interessante. Não há grandes descrições, mas, enquanto acompanhamos a investigação, vamos apanhando as pequenas características de cada personagem e acabamos por ir tecendo, por nós próprios, as suas personalidades.

Adorei a história de amor. Também ela tranquila, sem arremessos de paixão, sem calores assolapados, uma construção bem sustentada, calma e profunda. Adorei.

O fim...bem, metade esperado a outra metade inesperado, uma provocação a qualquer leitor, mesmo ao mais concentrado.

É muito gratificante ter o privilégio de ler as obras de Colleen, pelo conteúdo, sem dúvida, mas para mim, principalmente pela sua escrita tão madura, tão ... falta-me o termo, explico assim, ler este livro foi como estar num barquito de madeira branca, num pequeno lago, num pôr-de-sol de fim de verão, com uma ligeira brisa a embalar-me e a envolver-me...puro prazer!

McCullough's Carmine Delmonico books are just...off. The dialog is wrong, the location information is wrong, the plots are wrong ...and yet, I keep reading them (it might be that the appeal is that of a campy movie, there is pleasure in the wrongness of the thing). Can't say I recommend it, but can't say I completely regret finishing it either.

This book was so long and so boring!

Every character that was introduced could possibly have done it; they all had secret hideaways that Carmine couldn’t see, because he couldn’t get warrants; they were all obnoxious. Really?!

I know it was the 1960’s but really, the police were still able to follow leads, make sensible deductions. And the number of police involved in the “secret surveillance” was in plausible. It seems pretty evident that the author hadn’t really bothered to research the basics of police procedure before writing the book.

And don’t get me started on the end! Absolutely ridiculous!

It’s a shame because I loved The Thorn Birds.

It's been a long time since I last read McCullough's other books, the Caesar books and the Ladies. I did enjoy this one, and will go back to the library for more of these. Well developed, twist at the end that I might have seen coming a few pages earlier, had I paid attention. Certainly worth reading another Carmine Delmonico.

I read Tim when I was about 16 – it was not long after the movie adaptation with Mel Gibson came out. I was obsessed with books and with Mel … seemed a logical choice of reading. That was the first and only Colleen McCullough novel I'd ever read – until On, Off. Why oh why didn’t I leave well enough alone? Because my Mum gave me the book as a present, that’s why. So I wanted to get through it.

It took three tries, though. Seriously. I rarely stop reading a novel. I think I could count on one hand the number of novels I have not finished. Perhaps I’m a little compulsive that way. But there have been too many times when I have thought a story is trash, be it due to bad characterisation, unappealing style, holes in the plot or simple lack of interest in the subject matter, whatever, and then at some point it all comes together and takes off.

Not in this case, however.

The first attempt I got to about page 67.

The second attempt I made it to about 102. Wahoo!

The third try I made it all the way to the end, but not with a lot of eye-rolling and throwing the hardcover on the floor in fits of pique.

So what’s so bad about it, I hear you ask? It’s Colleen McCullough, for goodness’ sake! “Our Colleen”.

I read in an interview that she set out to write a “classical whodunit”, and that meant “inflicting upon my detective the old way of discovering who did a murder or a crime, unaided by forensic teams, devices and all the rest of that stuff”. Hence she set it in the 1960s. Which, as far as I’m concerned, made it dated, out of touch and of little relevance to my generation and younger.

In the interview she also claimed that she chose 1965 because “the word ‘serial killer’ didn’t exist … They were rare … There was no such thing as profiling … it dawns upon everybody that this person is, to all extents and purposes, an ordinary, normal person …”

Unfortunately for McCullough’s novel, we now live in a world where we are bombarded by news about serial killers, novels about serial killers, biographies about serial killers, footage of serial killers, discussions over coffee about serial killers. Dexter is the secret seemingly-normal serial killer we've come to love. We already know that they are often ‘ordinary’ people. So what’s the payoff at the end? No twist. No macabre chill that makes you eye your neighbours suspiciously next time they wave at you over the fence, wondering if they’re actually a serial killer or not. We already know they could be and live our lives accordingly.

I suppose also the 1960s U.S. setting gave her the race card to play, which added texture to the novel in the form of an interesting sub-plot, but wasn’t essential to the story. There could have been other determining features of the victims towards which the killer was drawn.

For someone who has so much writing experience, I was discombobulated by the way in which she chose to introduce the characters. It was like reading the beginning of the Bible (you know, the ‘begats’ part). ‘Here is character 1, who is this type of scientist and has brown hair and blue eyes and rides a bicycle, and here is character 2, who is that type of scientist and has blonde hair and brown eyes, and is a bit of a cheapskate …’ . Even by the third attempt I found it impossible to get a good grasp of most of the characters until well over the half way point. Perhaps this is typical of the ‘classical whodunit’ – I wouldn’t know because I haven’t read much of the genre. (Oops, that probably should have been a disclosure early in this entry!)

I also found clunky grammar and awkward style … could this be because she was trying to follow the ‘rules’ of the genre with little practice? From the little I know of it, it does have its own kind of style. Perhaps the author needed to have a whodunit manuscript in her bottom drawer before she wrote the second one that was published … kind of like the literary equivalent to the first pancake (i.e. the first pancake in a batch never turns out right and it’s always given to the dog or the teenage boy of the house). Maybe she would then have felt a bit more comfortable in the genre. Or is this how she always writes?

The main characters, Carmine Delmonico and Desdemona, were another problem. It seems as though McCullough has tried to create a multi-layered and surprising detective as her protagonist. Carmine isn’t a typical cop in that he likes opera and his apartment is tastefully and expensively decorated. He has a taste for the finer things in life. It didn’t work. Even as he developed his relationship with Desdemona, his different sides just couldn’t be reconciled and he didn’t ring true.

The one saving grace of the novel was the character of Clair Ponsonby. She was written with just the right amount of ambivalence. I found myself constantly wondering … is she really blind? … she seems to have something to hide … why did she tell those lies? But her rebuttals were always so logical and cogent within the narrative world. And then the way she acts at the end of the novel, after we know ‘whodunit’, leaves the reader in a nice little quandry. I won’t spoil this one, even with a warning, because, after all, there are certain rules about 'classical whodunits' …

I read this book immediately after reading The Thorn Birds (one of my favorite books) so this book was bound to not be as wonderful in my mind. It was an interesting story but the writing style was a bit lacking.

Too many suspects...too many deaths research facility connections

De fácil leitura, com um desenvolvimento em parte muito esperado. Com um final nada previsto.

Good Who Dun It with lots of twists

Octombrie şi noiembrie 1965

  Miercuri, 6 octombrie 1965

  Jimmy se trezi treptat, conştient la început de un singur lucru – că era îngrozitor de frig. Dinţii îi clănţăneau, carnea îl durea, degetele de la mâini şi de la picioare îi amorţiseră. Şi de ce nu putea să vadă nimic? De ce nu vedea? În jurul lui era un întuneric de nepătruns ce nu semăna cu nimic din ce mai văzuse până atunci. Când se dezmetici, îşi dădu seama că era prins în ceva străin, urât mirositor. Înfăşurat! Intră în panică şi începu să ţipe şi să tragă cu unghiile de materialul cu care era înfăşurat. Acesta se rupse sub mâinile lui, dar după ce reuşi să se elibereze şi văzu că frigul persistă, simţi că înnebuneşte de groază. În jurul lui mai erau şi alte chestii la fel de urât mirositoare ca şi bandajele cu care fusese legat, dar indiferent cât de tare ar fi ţipat, ar fi sfâşiat, ar fi smuls, nu reuşea să scape, nu putea să zărească nici măcar o geană de lumină, şi nu simţea nici cea mai uşoară boare de aer cald. Aşa că ţipă, rupse şi smulse în continuare, cu pulsul bubuindu-i în urechi, auzind doar sunetele făcute de el.Otis Green şi Cecil Potter veniră împreună la muncă. Se întâlniseră zâmbitori pe strada Eleventh. Era ora şapte fix, dar se simţeau în al nouălea cer la gândul că nu trebuiau să ponteze. Locul lor de muncă era civilizat, omule, nu puteai nega chestia asta. Îşi puseră pachetele pregătite pentru masa de prânz în micuţul dulăpior de inox pe care-l păstraseră pentru folosinţa lor exclusivă – nu era nevoie de încuietori, căci aici nu existau hoţi. Apoi îşi începură ziua de lucru.

  Cecil îi auzea deja pe copilaşii săi cum ţipau după el; merse drept la uşiţa lor, o deschise şi le spuse cu tandreţe:

  — Salut, băieţi! Ce mai faceţi, ha? Toată lumea a dormit bine?

  Uşa încă se închidea în urma lui Cecil când Otis se apucă de cea mai puţin plăcută îndeletnicire din ziua aceea – golirea frigiderului. Recipientul de plastic, cu roţi, pe care-l folosea mirosea a curat şi a proaspăt. Adăugă încă o rezervă şi îl împinse până la uşa frigiderului – o uşă masivă, de oţel, cu mâner care servea şi ca încuietoare. Ceea ce se petrecu după aceea îl luă cu totul prin surprindere: în momentul în care deschise uşa, ceva se năpusti pe lângă el, urlând din toţi rărunchii.

  — Cecil, vino încoace! strigă el. Jimmy e încă în viaţă, trebuie să-l prinzi!

  Maimuţa parcă înnebunise, dar după ce Cecil vorbi cu el puţin şi-i întinse braţele, Jimmy îi sări la piept, tremurând, iar ţipetele i se transformară în gemete slabe.

  — Doamne, Otis, spuse Cecil, ţinând animalul în braţe ca un tată pe propriul său copil, cum i-a scăpat chestia asta doctorului Chandra? Bietul de el a fost închis în frigider toată noaptea. Gata, gata, Jimmy, gata! Tăticul e aici, omuleţule, acum eşti pe mâini bune!