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A review by obsidian_blue
Agony Hill by Sarah Stewart Taylor
2.0
Please note that I received this via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
I don’t see me reading the subsequent books in this series. It was long and tedious. Jumping between three characters and too many mysteries that were left unresolved has me giving this two stars. Full review to come.
Full review: "Agony Hill" takes place in Vermont in 1965. A man named Franklin Warren arrives to work at the local sheriff's office as a detective. Warren has experience in major crimes and now that more "city" folks and problems are flowing through the area, the job of policing has started to change. When a local farmer named Hugh Weber though is found dead in a locked barn which leaves a question of whether he committed suicide or was murdered. This is the first book in the so-called Franklin Warren series, but the book also follows a female amateur detective named Alice Bellows, and the wife of the dead man, Sylvie.
So, this all together really didn't work. Honestly the best part of the book for me was Alice Bellows and her history. We get some glimpses of this during the book, but she's really similar to a younger Miss Marple and I liked what we get about how she solved other mysteries in the town and really seemed to know right away what happened with regards to Hugh Weber (that does not get revealed til the very end though).
Franklin Warren was boring. You have the mystery of why he is in Vermont, the reveal, and then I don't know, he seemed to just blunder around until the very end. There are still some mysteries left for him to get to the bottom of, but I didn't care.
The character of Sylvie's point of view really didn't need to be added. I just didn't get a lot of added there via her, and I just thought hers and Warren's points of view slowed down the entire flow of the book.
The plot such as it was, just isn't the main focus (Hugh's death) because we get little town mysteries and bigger mysteries going on too. It was just too much after a while.
The setting of Bethany, Vermont actually felt older than it was depicted in the book. It's supposed to take place during 1965, but it read like a throwback town in the early 1950s at times. I also thought it was weird there was no mention of Malcolm X's assassination, Bloody Sunday, The Civil Rights Marches, etc. It just felt oddly empty of Black Americans at all. Even just mentioning them and the events taking place would have made the book feel more grounded. There are many mentions of the Vietnam War and boys/men going through Vermont to get to Canada, but even that didn't seem to have been taken a hard look at via the author and their characters.
The ending didn't pack that much of a punch. I love locked room mysteries novels, but this one was pretty eh since it's real obvious who was responsible for it, (at least it was to me). It just felt like a lot of book to get there. I was hoping for something reminiscent of Miss Marple, but this was a miss for me.
I don’t see me reading the subsequent books in this series. It was long and tedious. Jumping between three characters and too many mysteries that were left unresolved has me giving this two stars. Full review to come.
Full review: "Agony Hill" takes place in Vermont in 1965. A man named Franklin Warren arrives to work at the local sheriff's office as a detective. Warren has experience in major crimes and now that more "city" folks and problems are flowing through the area, the job of policing has started to change. When a local farmer named Hugh Weber though is found dead in a locked barn which leaves a question of whether he committed suicide or was murdered. This is the first book in the so-called Franklin Warren series, but the book also follows a female amateur detective named Alice Bellows, and the wife of the dead man, Sylvie.
So, this all together really didn't work. Honestly the best part of the book for me was Alice Bellows and her history. We get some glimpses of this during the book, but she's really similar to a younger Miss Marple and I liked what we get about how she solved other mysteries in the town and really seemed to know right away what happened with regards to Hugh Weber (that does not get revealed til the very end though).
Franklin Warren was boring. You have the mystery of why he is in Vermont, the reveal, and then I don't know, he seemed to just blunder around until the very end. There are still some mysteries left for him to get to the bottom of, but I didn't care.
The character of Sylvie's point of view really didn't need to be added. I just didn't get a lot of added there via her, and I just thought hers and Warren's points of view slowed down the entire flow of the book.
The plot such as it was, just isn't the main focus (Hugh's death) because we get little town mysteries and bigger mysteries going on too. It was just too much after a while.
The setting of Bethany, Vermont actually felt older than it was depicted in the book. It's supposed to take place during 1965, but it read like a throwback town in the early 1950s at times. I also thought it was weird there was no mention of Malcolm X's assassination, Bloody Sunday, The Civil Rights Marches, etc. It just felt oddly empty of Black Americans at all. Even just mentioning them and the events taking place would have made the book feel more grounded. There are many mentions of the Vietnam War and boys/men going through Vermont to get to Canada, but even that didn't seem to have been taken a hard look at via the author and their characters.
The ending didn't pack that much of a punch. I love locked room mysteries novels, but this one was pretty eh since it's real obvious who was responsible for it, (at least it was to me). It just felt like a lot of book to get there. I was hoping for something reminiscent of Miss Marple, but this was a miss for me.