The Mystery of Albert E. Finch

[cornerofmadness]

The Mystery of Albert E. Finch by Callie Hutton

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I bought this one without doing my due diligence (though it's 4 starred here so that might not have helped) because it was set in Bath England, a vastly interesting place. Outside of two mentions of Sally Lunn's this could have been set anywhere, that's how badly the setting was used. Sigh. It didn't even do a particularly good job at setting the time period, other than a few mentions of carriages and a scattering of t'is and t'was thrown in for...yeah I'm not even sure. There are so many better historicals out there.

To be fair, I didn't read the first two (nor do I plan t0) and I had high hopes since the author has many titles (beginning to think it was because she shotguns them out there). I even gave it some credit because it's a personal preference to not have moron cops and the two in this are super stupid (to the point even their boss tells them they're dumb and try again).

Amy and William have married only to have the husband of her cousin, Alice to be accused of killing Alice right at their wedding dinner table. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum detectives tell the newlyweds they can't leave Bath nor can they get involved in the case. They ignore the latter and spend at least 200 pages whining about missing their Brighton Beach honeymoon to the point I was ready to throw this thing into a woodchipper if I had to hear about it one more time.

So if they want to go be newly weds, they have to solve Alice's murder and yet somehow don't put an obvious suspect on their list for literally ages. There aren't that many suspects so I figured out what happened the moment it was mentioned Albert doesn't like champagne and gave it to his wife. Annabel her twin however is sure he killed Alice and doesn't want Amy to investigate (and thanks for giving 4 characters A names).

Amy and William are very one note characters. Amy spends a lot of time getting angry over the littlest of things. Now I came in with book three so never really saw her write anything let alone a mystery and the book club scenes were pointless (unless you want to give them more reasons to complain about the honeymoon. No lie Amy is more upset about this than she ever seems about her cousin's death. Oh well Alice is dead but damn it I can't go on my honeymoon).

Her family is forced to live with her and William for a short time because of a leak in the plumbing of her father and brother's new place in Bath. Why? To prove her father is a jerk? To set up her brother's arc? None of it added to the story. Eloise is supposed to be Amy's best friend. She's barely in this so her little arc at the end has no impact. Heck even the parrot Othello's sex changes from time to time (along with other things that should have been caught in editing).

This was a definite miss for me. Sad because I would have loved a series set in Bath but it's definitely not going to be this one.



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