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The Art of Detection

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Customer Reviews
Rating:

- Missed the target
I have read and loved all of the Kate Martinelli mysteries, until this one. It went well until the "Sherlock Holmes" manuscript was wedged in. After that, the book became dull and predictable, with the only bright spot being at the very end, when Kate and her partner Lee were whisked off to city hall for an impromptu wedding.

Rating:

- disappointing
After reading the Beekeepers Apprentice, I was eager to experience Laurie King's other works, but The Art of Detection was a big disappointment when I "read" it via an audio version. It started out slowly and with a vast mass of dull research material regarding San Francisco harbor fortifications and descriptions of the Sherlockian victim's home - the former was (as I feared) never very relevant to the story. While the story got going with the "story within the story" a possibly original Sherlock Holmes in SF mystery, the character of the rather unsympathetic and unimaginative protagonist Kate Martinelli, with her cloying personal life ultimately sunk this one. Im afraid this turned out in the end to be more of a piece of gay special pleading than an effective mystery. story.

Rating:

- What a relief!
I really love both the Martinelli and Russell/Homes series, but I found the last Martinelli outing disappointing. It was a great pleasure to see Kate back in grand form, with the added deliciousness of the Russell/Holmes tie-in. I love watching Kate deal with the peculiarities of reenactors and the "is it real or is it fake" manuscript market -- a nice change from more typical urban violence

While I agree that the pace is slower in this plot than is typical for this series, I didn't find that the narrative dragged. Moreover, the reasons for the slow-down were laid out explicitly and are the kinds of issues investigators encounter when they aren't forced to solve their cases before the next show comes on: confused jurisdiction; uncertainty as to whether a homicide has occurred; no indication that the public at large is endangered; no close relatives or friends to interview (or to hassle the police).

The pace also allows for exposition of Kate's personal life to flow through the story without holding it up. King has done her usual brilliant job of juxtaposing lives, cultural/historical attitudes, and personal quirks to illuminate the sadness and waste of a needless tragedy. (She also does a GREAT job showing the investigators and the criminal making use of the same tech trail.) Her social commentary manages to be explicit without being preachy and is an essential thread in the plot.

Rating:

- Just an Average Read
I've read several of Laurie King's books over the years. With the exception of A Grave Talent which was quite good, most of her books are just average, this one included. She is NOT a master of plotting. Her books meander here and there and eventually reach a conclusion that may be less than satisfying. So it is with The Art of Detection. The supporting characters are only vaguely drawn. Her protagonist, Kate Martinelli, is not that interesting. Now I'm a liberal Californian, but I could hardly stand to read one more line about the cultural rainbow of San Francisco, and all the OVERT EXAMPLES of what constitutes a "family" there. All right already. We get it. King's books are not terrible, just way back in the middle of the pack of mystery writers.

Rating:

- Less than the sum of its parts
I love Laurie King's Mary Russell novels, and I really like her Kate Martinelli mysteries, so I was very much looking forward to this meshing of those two worlds. But after reading it, I was left thinking, "Why bother?" Going back over it, I really can't find any one part of the book that was particularly bad, but it just didn't draw me in. The descriptions of the landscape in and around San Francisco are vivid; the details of the lives of the Sherlockian characters are fascinating (and it was amusing to see Kate wrestling with the concept of their dedication to their hobby); and the Holmes story-within-a-story was quite entertaining. But there seemed to be a lack of excitement throughout--a sense of apathy about the case and it's connections to the mysterious rediscovered manuscript which made the sudden violence of the ending seem completely out of place and the sudden happiness following that even more disconcerting. And I have to admit, that as a fan of both series, I was really hoping for at least some reaction from any of the characters when they discovered what the manuscript could really be. A quick reference in the last sentence frankly was not enough for me. I'm glad I waited until it was in paperback to buy it.

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