Christina reviewed Thirteen Guests by Martin Edwards
Review of 'Thirteen Guests' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
J. Jefferson Farjeon skillfully structures his novel by the timeline: a thirteenth guest by accident occupies a room in a lord's country manor for the entirety of a weekend planned for a hunt; vandalism, a disappearance, and murder ensue. Two guests engage in some detection, one being a journalist by trade, the other eager to know who and why his work-in-progress was ruined, but for the notes the journalist makes the detective arrives late in the novel to interview the help and the guests. Thirteen Guests lacks liveliness, in my opinion, even with all that's going on. Some characters exist without much decoration or motive, as landscape.
This is the second J. Jefferson Farjeon novel I've read, and I learned even before I finished it I am not a fan of the "people pace around a manor being anxious and shifty-eyed until a detective sorts it out in the last …
J. Jefferson Farjeon skillfully structures his novel by the timeline: a thirteenth guest by accident occupies a room in a lord's country manor for the entirety of a weekend planned for a hunt; vandalism, a disappearance, and murder ensue. Two guests engage in some detection, one being a journalist by trade, the other eager to know who and why his work-in-progress was ruined, but for the notes the journalist makes the detective arrives late in the novel to interview the help and the guests. Thirteen Guests lacks liveliness, in my opinion, even with all that's going on. Some characters exist without much decoration or motive, as landscape.
This is the second J. Jefferson Farjeon novel I've read, and I learned even before I finished it I am not a fan of the "people pace around a manor being anxious and shifty-eyed until a detective sorts it out in the last eighty pages" type of crime novel, although the country house murder trope appeals to me.