Tedious formula

What next? The Dinky toy huntsman? The story of the search for a boxed combine havester set in mint condition?

The warmth and humour of the Vinyl series was lost in this book. An unlikeable female protagonist who's a thief, con artist, liar, stalker, murderer (admittedly in self defence) and someone who'd sleep with Tinkler for favours rendered. What's to like about the heroine?

The story dragged out to an anti climatic ending that petered out leaving the way forward for a sequel. Please don't!

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Enjoyable but not his best.

Decent story but a bit padded, testament to the writers skill that he manages to make the reader warm to a character that doesn’t really have a single redeeming feature. Prefer the Vinyl crew.

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1 person found this helpful

Interesting take on crime fiction

I enjoyed this book and liked how it interconnected with the characters from the Vinyl Detective series.
Looking forward to more.

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Amusing but detailed

Others have said it well, but it did feel like a long short story. So much detail inside the mind of one central character, and not loads of plot.
Ended up liking her though and the relationship with Edwin.
Great idea to use same cosmology as Vinyl Detective. Let's hope for even more cross over in the next one.

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1 person found this helpful

Great at times, very odd at others.

This had the feel of a ten hour short story! Not a lot actually happened but there was much detail along the way. It was very much an Andrew Cartmel novel(la?) in the Vinyl Detective style and at times had me chuckling because he was writing at his funniest and his best. Lots of alliteration, lots of ironic observances etc. At other times though, the strangeness of the central character having such delusional morals and self belief was quite unsettling, since you needed to buy into her motivations and justification to keep going. Eventually I did, and by the end there were some redeeming characteristics starting to develop for her. I seem to remember that Nevada was not an entirely sympathetic character in the first Vinyl book and she is likeable now, so maybe the same will happen with Cordelia.

There was so much to like though that I have to come out on the positive side and say that I will look forward to the next one, especially if it brings the Vinyl Det characters back into it, like this one does. The whole Vinyl Det series is like 'The Beiderbecke Affair' in tone and content, with implausible coincidences and irritable but likeable characters all over the place. I'm happy to suspend my disbelief when the effect is as enjoyable as this. The downside though, is that sometimes the unpredictability becomes predictable, so I suspect we will have to endure CC again because his story was rather weakly left unresolved.

A number of other reviews for this book have been less favourable than mine, it seems. I admit that I was looking forward to another Vinyl Detective book but I am happy to report that having the characters appear in cameos here treads water well enough and maybe allows Andrew Cartmel to keep the characters alive and keep things fresh before returning to centralise them at some point in the next couple of years. Extend the Vinyl Det universe with another Cordelia book, please.

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The bigger picture.

I like how Andrew Cartmel writes. Naturally. I expected, like someone else, a stand alone novel and was pleased to meet up with characters from The Vinyl Detective at intervals. Giving us a look from a different angle at the people. I thought more was going to be made of the links from the last couple of books, but that didn’t happen. I was put off on reading the synopsis about Cordelia being a thief. You usually like to admire the primary character in the books you read but I must admit I warmed to her as the story progressed. The main point to latch onto I think, if that’s the object of this sideways step, is that you really don’t know people until you have something in common. I agree there seemed to be a considerable amount of bathtime fun. At least she was a very clean heroine. On the whole I enjoyed it, if not quite on the edge of my seat as with his previous books, it was fun, and well read.

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2 people found this helpful

A letdown

I was really looking forward to this book but sadly, it's disappointing.
As a stand-alone, it would get maybe a 4, as a part of a series, it gets 2. There is an awful lot of padding and I would much rather stick with the old gang than get to know Stinky's sister. Hopefully, we'll get back to the groove with the next instalment.

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An interesting change of style and gender

I’ve read a few of the authors “Vinyl Detective” stories and was surprised to find the change of both writing style and character. A simple tale, light but fun and beautifully described. A great beach read

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Enjoyable

I found the story entertaining. It got me through some rather tedious tidying up. It's a bit of lighthearted fun and I look forward to more in the same series.

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Bring back the Vinyl Detective

Poor narration, the narrator can’t even pronounce ‘Bauhaus’ correctly. The central character is unlikeable. I’m two hours in, can’t be bothered to finish it.

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