Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsDoes anyone talk like that nowadays?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 October 2021
ANTESCRIPT (April 2022)
How very curious. For a long time, with 12 'Likes', I was topping the amazon.co.uk reviews, then after a minor edit, of no great significance, I end up almost bottom of the entire chart on amazon.co.uk; yet I'm still topping it elsewhere eg on amazon.com (top of reviews in 'other countries'), and via kindle. Summat not quite right there...?
ANYWAY (16 Oct 2021 as amended):
It's been a while since I read the earlier volumes in the William Warwick series, but even so I think I would remember anything that put me off them. Has Archer's style changed dramatically of late? I find the conversations, of which there is an abundance, in this his latest WW book contrived, belaboured and hifalutin.
Take, for instance, in the course of a conversation, the emergence of a discourse - take a deep breath, one sentence, all of 41 words - on the origins of 'a feather in his cap'. I switched off, however interesting the explanation might be. It is so unrealistic, a testament more to Archer's erudition than to his craftsmanship.
Elsewhere we are fed lists of names of artists (and museums/galleries), about whom I'm left not much the wiser, or, indeed interested; the same might be said of just the two that are germane to the plot. Compare that with the subtler manner in which Michael Connelly weaves into one of his 'Bosch' novels the intriguing significance of the owl in the paintings of his protagonist's mediaeval namesake. Suffice it to say, I now have a volume of reproductions of that magnificent artist's output...
Moreover, in Archer's book I sense an occasional whiff of moralising, and though I have yet to spot any of the usual kind of product placement, I suspect it can be found nevertheless in all that name-dropping.
I'm still soldiering on with it in the hope that its merits will outweigh its faults, but my reaching the end is open to doubt. Frankly, give me instead the 22 or so volumes of Connelly's Bosch any day.
POSTSCRIPT (some time before April 2022):
I've started so I'll finish. I did. Ugh.
Maybe some worthy souls tackling the Lyke Wake Walk feel likewise...
There's a hint of a cliffhanger in the ending, perhaps enticing us to gobble up the next WW volume. Some, having plodded along Archer's path, might prefer the walk to the cliffs at Ravenscar than fall for that one...
