Murder by Death

I thought this one was going to end up my least favourite of the series when it started.  I've been listening to these on audio and I have sometimes struggled with the author's beautifully written but ultimately long descriptive passages.  Couple this with the fact that I lost patience with Mary and her inability to act rationally pretty early on and I spent some moments moaning at my car's audio system to "get on with it already!"

Then the author changed the POV to Holmes.  She's never done that before and I was even more apprehensive about the book, but in was at this point, in fact, that the book took off for me.  To do Holmes justice requires that the language become more succinct and I found the alternating view points were just what I needed to temper my impatience with Mary's internal rambles.

There's not much "mystery" in this book; the author introduced characters who served no purpose other than to provide for the existence of the villain so I was never in any doubt who it was, but there's so much more to the book than just the 'whodunnit' and I enjoyed the ride as all the pieces came together.

The writing is beautiful, rich and descriptive (even the lengthy internal monologues - especially those, actually) and ultimately I was riveted as I always am.  I keep telling myself that I should just read these so I can skim the monologues but Jenny Sterling's brilliant narration keeps me coming back to the audio again and again.