Review: What happens when style trumps content.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 25, 2014
Mr. Murphy is so in love with the -hard boiled- detective genre that he's forgotten he set the mystery in a small town in England.  His writing style can be amusing, and it has it's moments, but to use a scientific term, it is supersaturated with style which over time crystallizes into a very clear nothing.  I couldn't figure out what the mystery was at the start and was wondering why the hero was getting all these death threats and beatings.  Once I found out, I thought "They're getting upset over that?  People are willing to kill each other in a rural English town over this?"  This book is completely out of balance.  As humor, it exhausts the stylistic joke from overuse.  As a mystery/story, it doesn't seem anchored to anything.  The book is busy with style that the story doesn't seem very important to the writer.I hope Mr. Murphy can pull it together for future books, because there is a lot of potential there, just crazy proportions for this particular recipe.  (2 cups salt....one tablespoon flour).