Murder by Death

Well, of course I enjoyed it.  Too much, actually, as I stayed up until midnight finishing it, reading through the effects of my sleeping medication.  The book overcame the chemicals.

I'd have rated the story even higher, but I'm not a fan of pit-fight story settings; I never found the idea of the gladiators interesting and modern interpretations leave me just as disinterested.  But for all that it was still fast-paced, interesting, and often funny.  I love Kate's internal dialog.

Another reason I didn't rate it higher was a scene that started on page 178 when Kate "drew up to the shapeshifter safe house". It's a very good scene, where we learn a lot about what the heck is going on.  But midway through the scene, on page 188, they suddenly aren't in the safe house, but Kate's living room: "A xxx xxx stood in my living room."  (XXX for spoilers.)  It's the same scene - nobody moved or travelled - I read it twice again to make sure.  Another reference to Kate's living room when the character apologises for wrecking the room and Kate responds "Don't worry about it... happens all the time." 

Continuing into the next chapter, Kate asks Jim where the kerosene is and he gets it down out of the cabinet, so the scene ends back where it began, at the safe house.  But I swear, nobody ever moved!  It all ends up fine, but it yanked me out of the story pretty hard because I was sure I must have missed something and had to go back to search.  I lost my groove and it took me awhile to get it back.

As an aside, when Kate made that bet with Curran, did anyone think for even a millisecond that she wasn't going to lose?

I was quite pleased with myself for having correctly guessed Kate's secret and her heritage and I'm looking forward to reading about more of the details in future books.

Also, I love what Saiman ended up being in his true form but I'm a little confused:

I'm looking forward to the fourth book, but I'm going to take a break with a cozy or two - I have to actually sleep tonight and it's obvious I lack the self-discipline to put one of these books down before they are finished.