Where Things Are Solved but Not Fixed

Hue and Cry by Shirley Mckay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A medieval mystery set in Scotland. Pretty fun. I liked it well enough to finish and rank pretty highly (I gave it 4, though maybe 3 stars might be closer to the truth for me), but I don't really want to read the rest of the series. I guess I'd say it's a well written story in a niche I don't love to read.

(Reminds me of steak. I don't like it as much as everybody else. Doesn't mean it's not good.)

I guess it's the way everybody is sort of helpless. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can solve any of their problems; what doesn't kill them must be endured, including every kind of loss, separation, and violence. Everybody is watched and everybody is controlled. It's a claustrophobic feeling. And the mystery is only sort of solved, in the sense that we know what happened, but it doesn't really come out to the public. I wanted to see a forceful investigator track down evidence, present it to the world, and truly exonerate the innocent while punishing the guilty, all in a cool medieval city. Sherlock in Scotland. There's only a little of that.

And yet--it has many well developed characters to care about, a real sense of time and space, and excellent prose. I suspect many readers would enjoy this more than I did.

Recommended with reservations.

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