I spent 5 years of my life in Norfolk and by the way it isn't flat - although parts of it are wet. The Norfolk Mystery is, I'm sorry to say, a bit wet. I've just seen too many Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L Sayers and similar jolly murder adaptations set in or around the nineteen thirties. The lead non-narrative character in Ian Sansom's Nortolk Mystery is always quoting Latin or literary sources in a way which is potentially funny but becomes irritating on repetition and excess. I understand that this is satire. I get that. I also quite like the idea of this being a series of County based travelogues. But as farce it is just slightly the wrong side of PG Wodehouse for me. I never engaged in the 'whodunnit' element and it probably needed a dash of PD James to bring some gravitas to the murder. I just don't think he took the Norfolk motto "Do Different" seriously.
No comments:
Post a Comment