Dalziel again

[cyphomandra]

I was stomping through Borders in a displeased with the state of modern literature sort of mood, complete with one of those internal monologues about how it was all brands and not books (I think I’d just walked past the latest Raymond E. Feist), and then I saw this on the shelf and made a pleased squeaking noise. I prefer to think of myself as rich in internal contradictions rather than hypocritical, but opinions may differ.

I was then rewarded by having to wade through alternating lengthy emails and transcripts of Dalziel confiding all to a handheld dictaphone (somewhat unlikely), but finally finished the first section to find Pascoe and Wield (woo hoo!) and a more sensible third person pov (and, in even more excitement, an answer to the question about a particular character that I’ve been brooding over for the last two books). It does jump back to more lengthy emails and more Dalziel monologues, though, and while I appreciate that the author enjoys fiddling with the form for variety, it never quite works for me. It's also one of those books where much of the action is retrospective and the characters have to uncover it all, and while I do like that if it's done well I am currently on a forward momentum kick (I also want swordfights, but no-one is satisfying me in that department - every single play on at the moment seems to be contemporary and kind of static, although I did get to one recently with cake-wrestling sequences). On the other hand, there are some great character moments, and I am almost certainly missing a lot of witty allusions to Jane Austen's Sanditon, although I'm presuming the ie/ei confusion that marks a number of characters' writing is a nod to Austen's Love and Freindship.