Comment

Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Skokie Public Library.
Oct 24, 2014
There is some irony in the number of negative comments here. The cataloguing system used by public libraries are in themselves a catalogue of error. A textless picture book of Princess Diana's travels is deemed History. An academic history of the Revolutions of 1848 is put on the Travel shelves. A work on the economy of the mediaeval city-state winds up in Sociology of the Family. And, the relevance here, an astonishing number of crime novels are catalogued as General Fiction, even when the publisher has printed the words 'Crime Fiction' or similar on the back cover. That too is a point worth noting, for only public libraries and ignorant book chains use the outdated sobriquet 'Mysteries'. Much crime fiction ceased to be mysteries at least since Ruth Rendell's Judgement in Stone identified the villain in the first sentence. But, the irony, the commenters of negativity here seem to have missed the detail that Jewels of Paradise is catalogued as general fiction, and for once the cataloguers got it right. It is a most common thing that when a writer of a beloved series dares to essay something very different, readers are disappointed because the book is not like the series. Well, it is not supposed to be. This is work for those who like to savour description of geographical context, development of character, and the way and byways of research. The denouement is not surprising, but that is part of the point -- this is not a 'mystery' or crime novel any more than is Hugo's Les Miserables or Dickens' Oliver Twist.