Thoughts while reading: So far, I am loving all the references to famous British literature! In fact, the literary humor in general is really quite phenomenal.

Upon finishing, I have to explain my rating. I normally am not a mystery reader. In fact I only picked this one up because my parents actually met the author, so I felt like (as a reader) I needed to see what she was about. With my little experience of mystery novels, I'd say she did a damn fine job, it's just not where my reading interests usually lie. So...3. We developed characters (though sometimes there seemed too many, I understand sometimes you have to do that in order to to make the ending not too obvious), each with their own issues and concerns tangential to the main plot. Though I could not stand Havers...she just really got on my nerves. And the priest...ARGH. And as an American, I hope the dentist was an exaggeration...ugly man. But overall, lots of depth. And, though the story was heartbreaking, like one of those ones that you just can hardly comprehend for all the sadness and cruelty, it was well put together and nicely paced. I felt that perhaps there were a couple times where there was almost too much showing and not enough telling...as in, the characters seemed to be having "aha!" moments and I wasn't quite caught on yet. To the point where I started to feel a little behind. And in the end, for all the build-up, the ending just seemed too perfect, or easy. Shocking and horrible, but nothing crazy unexpected or twisty. So, I felt a little bit like I read the whole book just to get to a long winded explanation of why what we found out on the first page was the truth (and there are books that do that no problem, but it's a bit of a let down if that's not what the book builds you up to expect). In any case, overall very impressive and for real the literary allusions and uses were just awesome and made me feel great when I caught them. Just not really my thing.