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Title: Dull, overlong trifle
Review: I have read many books by the esteemed Dr. A, and this is certainly one of the weakest of them all. A none too surprising tour of a book & authors convention with workaday characters presumably based on real people (but who cares). The only lively character is Asimov himself, who is portrayed as lecherous, gluttonous and overbearing, tho still lovable. 90% of the interrogation by the amateur sleuth is dull and irrelevant and serves only as parsley to cover up the (miniscule) actual clues. But even here, the clues are introduced as clumsily as in his Lucky Starr on Mars, where out of nowhere a character flashes what turns out to be the murder weapon. Asimov wrote much better mysteries in ^A Whiff of Death^ and especially ^The Caves of Steel^, not to mention some of his superlative science fiction. Skip this one.
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