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Title: A Great Disappointment
Review: After the brilliance of Death In Holy Orders (to my mind Baroness James' finest book) there have been a pair of disappointments: The Murder Room and now The Lighthouse. Both novels suffer from lackluster plotting and an absolute absence of anything even remotely resembling humor.I wrote elsewhere that Baroness James is so busy elevating the murder mystery into literature with a capital L that she can often over-reach: the occasional literary allusion to Anthony Trollope can be fun, but eventually the poetic allusions start to feel shoe-horned in to the dialogue.To be fair, the book begins well. Baroness James is very skilled at creating closed environments and establishing relationships among a diverse set of characters. But before too long I detected the beginnings of a Big Finish, the kind of thing that Baroness James tries for on occasion, and the book just turned very tired and mechanical as the plot ground to a close.
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