Review: Promising but uneven
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 9, 2012
Eye of the Witch by Dana Donovan is a good book with parts that are below average and parts that are exceptionally good.  To deal with my criticism first, there is a lack of continuity.  The book appears to be set in the future but it includes vocabulary of the past, which provide a jolt to readers (or at least to this reader) "boom box" and "video tape" are technologies that are already outdated in the present.  I don't believe they will be widely used in the future.  Parts are repetitive. One character eats a lot and frequently.  He is described as eating a meatball sandwich, then a turkey, then candy bars and on and on.  Detectives interview a witness/victim/suspect, asking a few questions. Then they do the same with another person, a third person and then a fourth.  Next they interview the first person again, briefly again and the round robin starts again.  In this mystery the author does not "play fair." Unlike Christie, Sayers and Tay in the past and Hart, Grafton and Pickard in the present the solution depends on a series of unlikely events and relationships which are impossible to guess from the information given in the book.What the author does quite well includes: a powerful opening that induces the reader to care about the detective, a strong entrance of the witch and a clear, compelling description of the magic involved in this paranormal setting.  I wish the author had devoted the time she spent developing her ideas about magic to developing knowledge of writing mysteries.  Despite its faults, I can recommend this book due to the author's skill and her strengths.