Review: COZY, INDEED; HUMOROUS AND VERY TALKY.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 24, 2012
I listened to the book rather than reading it. While I am quite accustomed to Amazon's male robot's speech patterns, I did find the endless give and take between the police officer on the case and Stanley Hastings to be trying. None the less, the good humor and well-drawn central characters saved the day. Stanley and Alice, husband and wife, make a fine team and there are a number of other well-done characterizations. Stanley, though far from being in the mold of Philo Vance or young Ellery Queen, has been put into a book modeled on those in which they exercised their superior intellectual gifts. Hall makes the style work for him, not without necessary modification.Alice and Stanley have driven their son to his summer camp in New England and intend a second honeymoon before resuming normal preoccupations. Stopping at an Inn they are plunged almost immediately into a case of murder which Stanley despairs seeing the local police unravel. If no innocent person is to be assigned responsibility for the crime, Stanley feels he must take a hand. The result is an entertaining, though sometimes talky, book. I think it will please the average cozy reader.