Review: Inadequate
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 20, 2014
Serial killers have been the subject of numerous detective and mystery story writers for quite a while. Ellery Queen wrote a memorable one in the late forties before multiple killings had earned the sobriquet it now has. As his (their-as we now know) novel progresses, we share the growing horror of the multitudes, and the eagerness and frustration, of the police and the Master Detective.The premise in this book was promising: a multitude of murders in a crowded hotel, how the police, how the hotel management, how individual employees, deal with the crisis, the emotional turmoil attendant upon continued failure.The book starts out well enough: a guest in a prospering hotel is murdered in a locked room. This readies the reader for what comes  next. What comes next, however, and, what happens thereafter, unfortunately, throughout the book, is ennui, murder after murder with no build-up of tension, and a routine, almost off-hand,denouement. Reluctantly, writing a book being such a terrifying experience in my mind  that I never  even gave it a try, I have to say that the fault lies in what I judge to be the author's unreadiness for the "Big Time", or, least, for Big Time Mysteries. The writing is awkward, pedestrian, I would have to say, and the conceptualization of scenes, inadequate. No better examples need be cited than the culminating scenes which simply replicate the monotonous drone of what precedes them.I see that their are numerous kudos cast by  some of the other reviewers. Maybe they are right.