I really hate to be negative, especially about a writer whose books I have enjoyed in the past, but I was quite disappointed in the latest Joe Sandiland’s mystery. I discovered this series several years ago, and loved the earlier books set in India, particularly Ragtime in Simla, which had an ingenious plot and also contained the best description of a train crash I’ve ever read. Somehow, the later books, set in England or Europe, haven’t grabbed me the way the earlier novels did. This may be because the later books have moved into the area of international conspiracy as opposed to plots predominantly driven by personal motives, and being a cozy enthusiast, the themes are not as appealing to me. The book has certainly had many excellent reviews, so my reservations may simply stem from personal preferences. However, preferences apart, I found the plot hard to follow at times. There were characters that appeared, caught my interest, and then disappeared until so much later that it was hard to pick up the thread. The intermittent use of one character’s alias along with his real name also caused me to have to flip back a couple of times to check which person I was reading about. Even the character of Sandilands seemed inconsistent. In the previous book, he was a serious protagonist finding love with a young girl he had watched grow to adulthood. Yet The Spider in the Cup presents him as early nineteenth century pseudo-Bond type, always meeting a new girl to catch his interest. Barbara Cleverly can write such wonderful, vivid prose, so I really hope the next Sandilands mystery will meet the expectations I developed after those first few books. Nazis make such great bad guys, don't they? Joe Sandilands is now in his late thirties, still single, though engaged to Dorcas, and is now an assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, with The Branch under his supervision. While he is busy trying to insure security for a 66 nation economic conference in 1933 London, the body of an anonymous young ballet dancer shows up on his turf, or, more correctly, on his Chelsea riverbank. What with United States senators, double agents, secret societies and missing prima ballerinas, he has his hands full and the body is just a further complication that turns out to be a misdirection ploy by the evil empire of this tale. While I enjoyed the ins and outs of this particular espionage-with-a-little-murder tale, I'll admit to missing the more exotic settings of the earlier entries in this series. Why are so many tales being set in Depression-Era England lately?
What do You think about Spider In The Cup (2014)?
Not as good as previous books in the series, but still quite acceptable.
—kateuae
