- Deadly Magic by Elizabeth Crabtree, the first in its series, is currently free on Kindle.
In Deadly Magic by Elizabeth Crabtree, I think she tries to do this as well, mix all the quirky characters together to come up with a fun story; she is somewhat successful, but not entirely.
This cozy murder mystery starts out interesting enough. The 20-something (I'm guessing 27 or 28 since her high school reunion is coming up) main character, Grace Holliday, and her coworkers are at a magic show that is being put on for her boss's 50th birthday. She works for a toy company. It's Halloween and everyone is dressed up. She is on her first date with someone. She has a work nemesis who loves finding reasons to make her life miserable.
Plus, magic shows! Magicians! Illusions! And the story begins on Halloween and ends around Christmas. And her last name is Holliday....
This is all very promising. Lots of cute cues and leading.
Within the first chapter she's already 1) been part of the magic act, 2) had a kind of ruined first date, 3) been asked to work at while at the party, 4) discovered someone's panties (!) as well as been made privy to some (but not all) family secrets (not her own family). Oh, and someone gets murdered.
So, it is very promising—this is all a hook and you want to keep reading. And the characters are so quirky, and it's such a train wreck, what with the crazy boss and company going down hill, etc., that you kind of feel like you need to keep reading just to make sure the main character gets through everything okay. Which, I suppose, is a good thing, since the reader is still reading.
However, I got to about the mid point and almost had a fit of "rage quit" a couple of times with this book. The only reason I didn't throw the book across the room was that it was on my Kindle and I didn't want to damage that.
*sigh* I know Grace is just in her 20s, and I'm reading this book from the stance of a cynical, middle aged person, but she really was a lot like a female version of Dudley Do Right. She never said no to anything. She let everyone talk her into doing things. And she believed everything everyone told her, and even I, the reader, could see that they weren't telling the truth. She let people push her around. She'd been at the same company for 10 years and risen in the ranks to toy designer merely by not getting fired or quitting in a fit herself for that length time.
The writer does make a case for that, in that the company structure is kind of ridiculous. But it did seem almost too incredible.
I kept reading, eventually, just so I'd find out "who done it". There were some cute bits, like when Grace realizes she can get free furniture from a new roommate foisting themselves on her just by letting them raid her closet (her sister's clothes). But there again, who lets a stranger foist themselves on you as a roommate. If you've been living in New York City for 10 years would you really let someone you barely know move in? Really? Without vetting them properly? Making sure their check clears?
And then when a second murder occurs, you can see what the writer is doing, the situation she is setting up, and it's not bad. It's one of those things that works. Dorothy Sayers would have pulled something similar in a Lord Peter Wimsey story.
But then this was followed by a lot more of me thinking, "Really?" as I read more situations where Grace is letting herself be led around by the nose.
Sometimes in stories we write we have to create ridiculous situations or push a character into a ridiculous situation. But when we do that, we have to make sure it's somewhat believable. My suspension of disbelief didn't suspend for very long on this story. And again, that may be different for others. At the outset, this was an entertaining set up and I wanted to enjoy it. But by the end, I was over it.
And maybe the writer was over it, too. Because when it came to the reveal, it wasn't something Grace really "solved". I mean, she solved a small part of it, sure. And even then, when one of the perpetrators is revealed, you wonder how Grace could have stayed alive in NYC for so long if her radar for people is soooo off. She shoulda been killed in her sleep a long time ago. Maybe, like Dudley, she's just so steadfast and true, that it keeps her alive.
But the reveal went on for a long time, as if the writer didn't want to bother with writing out another few chapters to bring the story to a close. It wasn't all wrapped up when she solved it. It kept getting more "wrapped up" - as in the people around her kept adding their... "and then.." bits during the end and the epilogue. All synopsis. All hearsay. And the end just went on a little too long for me. I like a good epilogue, really, I do. But at a certain point, it just needs to be written as more chapters.
I wanted to like this story. Grace is a likable character (though, I kept forgetting her name). And in fact, I read the additional first part of the next story in the series that is included for free in the back of the book, just in case I might like it better (maybe it was just this story). And again, nearly threw the Kindle across the room. This woman has no survival instincts. At a certain point you say to people who are talking you into things, "no, I will deal with it this way." Or if you can't seem to do that, you nod and smile and wander off and still do it your way. You don't let people talk you into things that you should have figured out were not good for you when you were six years old. In this case (the case beginning the second book), her sister talks her into wearing a big pink prom dress for their reunion because Grace's luggage got lost and the reunion is formal. Again, Really? I can be a huge wimp when it comes to saying no, but even back in my 20s I would have said No to that, sprayed and brushed off my jeans, borrowed some heals, brushed my hair, washed my face, reapplied my makeup and borrowed a nice sweater and just said, "Sorry, my luggage was lost" once I got to the reunion. Wouldn't be the first time, wouldn't be the last. If the writer wanted Grace to end up a in a ridiculous big pink prom dress, then she needed to find a more believable way to do it. At that point I realized that no, I wouldn't like the next story and quit reading.
Again, if you're going to push a ridiculous situation on the reader, it needs to be believable.
Read this story for the some of the entertaining bits. Try not to throw your Kindle straight across the room when you run into the thin plot.
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