Private investigators Holmes, Marple, and Poe have temporarily relocated to a remote lodge in upstate New York following a bombing and fire that destroyed their home and base of operations. When a body of a young mother is discovered in the frozen waters of Cayuga Lake, Holmes and cohort are surprised to hear that there was a note implicating him in the murder. Of course it’s their old and dangerous nemesis Oliver Paul. This time he’s making threats to continue his murderous explosions unless they bring him his wife, the imprisoned and notorious Agnes Matts.
This third in the series was a bit of a downer as there wasn’t much sleuthing and little actual detecting of any kind. There were tons of side plots and diversions including Marple with her French cooking and exposure of a chef’s sexual abuse, Poe and Virginia obsessed with their muscle car and racing, Holmes with his fixation on his psychiatrist, Grey’s twin pregnancy and a lot of other uninteresting details including the oil rig description and everything about Oliver Paul and Agnes Matts. I’m tired of this continued focus on that particular villain. Can’t we move on?
Yeah it was a quick and easy mindless read, but I was hoping for more of the intelligent and brilliant deductive reasoning and impressive investigative work that the trio is meant to be doing. The whole romance thing between Marple and Holmes is a bust and there is no way that needs to continue as they should friend zone. Holmes is way too messed up for her. Anyway, that’s my thought. Let’s get back to a good solid crime and a fresh set of bad guys. I missed the suspense and tension and the clever interaction. The title is quite misleading as the girl in the lake took about 2 pages of the book and had nothing to do with the overall plot.
I was able to listen to the audio book from my local library while also following along in the e-book ARC provided by the publisher. The narrator, Christine Lakin, did a great job as usual with the characters although this would definitely benefit from having a male voice for Holmes and Poe. She definitely mastered the variety of accents.
This is the third book in the series that needs to be read from the beginning in order.
Genre and tags: detective fiction, eponymous character names, serial killer
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