Free The Girl Is Murder (The Girl Is Murder, #1) Drafted By Kathryn Miller Haines Provided As EPub
book was incredibly good! I don't normally like books that occur in the "olden days", I
was real surprised with myself that I enjoyed it so much, I'm also shocked that I picked it up in
the library cause it sounded so interesting, I loved it! Awesome.
What's makes it amazing is the characters, Sound just like they are from the's, Young, intriguing, beautiful.
A mystery that leaves you on the edge of your seat and there are just moments in this book that makes your jaw drop,
Impressive Miller Haines. Iris is desperate to help her father with his private dectective business, Since his injury in the war, she sees her services as indespensible to him, but since he's been gone half her life, all he can see her as is a little girl.
There were elements of this book
I liked very much, I love midcentury mysteries and I liked Iris, She was a plucky girl going for what she wants, making mistakes along the way, but learning as she goes, I was hoping to like this installment of noir historical mystery/drama as much as I liked Ten Cents a Dance and What I Saw and How I Lied, but this book just fell a little short for me.
Iris' mother had to be dead in order for she and her father to be put in the situation they are in, but the resulting plotline of her suicide felt extraneous to the rest of the story and while having it remain unresolved is realistic, it made the whole subplot feel unnecessary to me.
Without saying too much, I'll also so thatt the resolution of the mystery itself was also a bit unsatisfying to me, but all that said, it was a fastmoving plot with enough intrigue and good characterization to keep me going.
I always liked Nancy Drew but also found her a little white bread if you get my drift, Iris Anderson is how Nancy Drew would be in reality, if Nancy's dad lost all his money and his leg, It'sand Iris is just starting public school after going to private school for most of her life, Her father is back from the war after losing his leg at Pearl Harbor and her mother has committed suicide some months before, Iris's dad is a private eye but his business has suffered since he lost his leg, Iris is now forced to move to the Lower East Side and start at public school and she's really nervous about it, needless to say, She meets a melange of interesting and fun characters and wants to help "Pop" with his business but he is dead set against it, What's a girl to do but do some investigating on her own,
I LOVED this book! It had everything I like in a book: plucky and engaging heroine, good mystery, likable supporting characters, accurate historical content and an interesting plot line.
Plus all the greats slang was awesome! I'm definitely going to incorporate "Boy Howdy" into my everyday life, I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was fabulous, The second in the series, The Girl is Trouble just came out and I can't wait to read it!
Iris Anderson is still in shock from her Mother's sudden suicide less than six months ago.
Now she's living with her Pop in rundown neighborhood, going to public school, She's been taken away from the Upper East Side, her private school and all the friends she's ever had, Not to mention that Pop is barely scraping by as a private detective because he only has one leg after the disaster at Pearl Harbor, and he refuses to ask for help.
Iris is miserable in public school and starts creeping around trying to solve Pop's cases for him, even after he told her to stay out of it, She begins to make friends in school with the 'Rainbows' a group of outcasts after she tells a white lie about her Pop, Then Tom, one of the group, goes missing all of the sudden, Iris' Pop takes on the case, but is getting further and further off the trail, So she steps in, getting in closer to Tom's friends and staying out late into the night at Harlem clubs, rolling them for information, The information leads back to Grace, her former friend at private school who had been secretly involved with Tom, What really happened to Tom Was he murdered, did he run away or did someone make him 'disappear' By the time the book ends, you find out all of the answers to these questions.
I liked the start of this book and it had a very promising premise, I do however, have a few complaints, Iris was not a very strong heroine, She came off as weak and clingy in some parts of the book, Others she seemed like a stubborn brat, That was okay though because she was very much a teenager, That I could handle withough complaint, It was the lackluster ending to the booklong mystery that truly irritated me to no end, It might have been realistic, but it was not at all exciting and it made me feel like I'd wasted my time, If you're in need of a girl detective fix, go watch Veronica Mars instead you'll be much more satisfied,
VERDICT:/Stars
No money or favors were exchanged for this review, This book is now available in stores and online, .stars This book was so good! I really enjoyed the feel of WWII, Iris character and the mystery aspect of the story, The use of slang was a great touch, For me, tried too hard to be the hardboiled's mystery novel, Failed to connect to the protagonist and some of the lingo was going to drive me batty, This is also a problem with some's films so not an isolated issue of this book, No one really seemed worth rooting for or caring about their path esp, given the choices some of these people made, so I would give it a pass,
However, full marks for that gorgeous cover, Perfect!.stars.
I liked Iris enough as a character, and while I thought the mystery played out fine, it was everything else that didn't quite work for me.
First, I thought the repetition of the fact it wasbecame old quick, There's showing me a setting and a time period, which is done well, but then it also falls a bit too hard into telling with the repetition of television show names, radio show names, product brands, etc.
Those things are pretty meaningless to me as a reader and don't add to the sense that it's, It's clutter.
My biggest problem, though, came down to one involving social/economic status, We're dropped into this story when Iris has moved from the Upper East Side to the Lower East Side, and that's indication of a change in finances for Iris's family.
Her mom killed herself, and now it's just her and dad, and he's a private investigator, so he doesn't make much, Rent's been late, and Iris wants to help her dad out financially, But there's a weird relationship then when Iris wants to reconnect with her old life, She's very judgmental about the wealth there, unable to realize that she was once a part of that very life, There's a lot of stigma attached to money, both the having it and not having it, and while this is a thread I find powerful in a lot of stories, here it's not developed as well as it should be, and it falls flat.
It makes me question Iris's sincerity in getting to the bottom of Tom's disappearance, but more than that, it makes me question her character and her interest in developing real friendships with people.
I'm not sure this ties in EXACTLY with the money issue here, but Iris had a lot of other complicated feelings I couldn't unwind, She really dislikes the fact Pearl is not a thin girl, and she's constantly commenting on how Pearl is fat and she repeatedly points out what and how much she's eating.
I get that Iris wants nothing from Pearl other than someone to do some of her dirty work, but this felt shallow and hollow, Part of me does think this relates right back to the complicated issue of social class, Pearl's clearly not wealthy, and Iris makes it clear she's not of the physical caliber of her former friends, She eats a lot.
Iris is not only quick to judge, but she likes to place blame everywhere, While I know Iris wants to help her father initially, her motives are ultimately selfish, It doesn't make sense to me why she invests so heavily in Tom, especially because she knows he's played her, I don't buy ,
And while , he's a pretty crappy detective to not put anything together about why his daughter is always gone and always lying left and right.
So the assessment one of his clients gave about being lousy Well, they were right,
The writing was fine, though at times it became a bit drippy with how hard it tried to master the slang, I noticed it because it became repetitive to a fault, "Square from Delaware" and "Boy Howdy" didn't need to be used as much as they were,
All that said, I think readers who enjoy Judy Blundell or who liked Christine Fletcher's Ten Cents a Dance will enjoy the read, I'm being much more critical than most readers would because these are personal peeves, but on the whole, it's an enjoyable read, It's a time period I find fascinating, especially as it's not set out to be a wartime story, and yet it so much is simply because that was the world.
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