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Title: Airport reading at best
Review: Wow, this book is dreadful. The prose is painfully bad, the dialogue is excruciating, the characterization falls flat, and the plot loses any tenuous claim to credibility unless the reader is willing to assume that each character is stupider than the last.Occasionally such a book can be rescued by an interesting detective. Alas, I have no idea whether this is one of them; because although this book is billed as an Inspector Jack Oxby novel, when I finally gave up reading on page 300 of a 378-page book, Inspector Oxby had made one brief appearance and garnered two passing references. I assume he actually does take part in the plot at some point, but I can't vouch for it.The cover blurb says "Fans of Ian Pears' art mysteries will enjoy the lavish detail." Fans of Ian Pears would do well to reread Ian Pears and stay well away from this charmless hash.
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