Summary: After the death of one of her students, Bel Barrett starts investigating why and comes to a surprising conclusion.
Reaction: Woot, mysterious mystery! I wasn't too interested in some of the stuff related entirely to the personal life of someone ~my mom's age, but other than that, I enjoyed it. The ending was such a surprise I'm still not sure how Bel figured out who the murderer was even knowing all the facts.
I guess mysteries aren't really books one rereads because the whole point is trying to figure out whodunit, and there's no point to that if you already know.
This is an example of a book where the irrelevent personal life stuff fits into it nicely. There's plenty of stuff that serves no purpose in terms of the mystery story, but it doesn't draw attention to itself that way (historical narratives are kept to a page or two and everything fits nicely in the continuing saga of the characters (it seems to be a series, so this is another chapter in the personal lives of the characters in addition to being a self-contained mystery) Hey, that's a good idea for how to deal with my inability to come up with a decent plot for any story I'm trying to write: I can integrate it into a series of mysteries. Except that means I'd have to come up with crimes and clues and try to imagine the mindset of someone, or several someones, who doesn't know who was responsible for whatever crime. Never mind.)
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