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Half way into this book, I was on the verge of giving it up. Yet, some strange and morbid curiosity held me back. I still harbored the hope that, perhaps in the final lines, there would be a series of unexpected events, a shocking revelation, or a smarter ending. But alas, the flat characters followed their predictable paths to the end. Actually, I was wrong. Not all endings were so foreseeable. For Cesar, the ending was truly horrid. Throughout the book, it was evident that the author did not hold a very high opinion of gay people or even women. They were always described as being so beautiful, with their physical traits emphasized, and it was implied that they couldn't be good at playing chess because they supposedly cared too much about what others thought. But to kill the gay antagonist by giving him a rectal tumor? Really? (Well, this wasn't the actual cause of his death, but it was what set the whole charade in motion.) Now, let's turn back to the plot. It was thin and poorly constructed. I grew tired of all the long paragraphs in which the author seemed to be telling me how I should feel. Not to mention the numerous phrases describing how Julia was so beautiful and how much she smoked. The scary parts were, at best, rather funny, and the entire writing style was too pretentious for my liking. If it weren't for the thorough documentation that went into this book, I would have given it just one star. But to be honest, all those chess-related parts, although well-researched, were sometimes a bit superfluous for those of us who don't play chess. In conclusion, I would much rather invest my time in other types of murder-mystery books.
