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A review by kellyjreads
A Gentleman's Murder by Christopher Huang
3.0
I almost gave up on this book like three times. I was traveling and had nothing else to do but read it, so don’t get the idea that it gets any more exciting. Without a doubt it is dry. Dry as California during wild fire season. Dry as 007’s martinis. Dry as this review is turning out to be.
BUT. If you are a well hydrated reader with nothing else to do, and you skim a little bit of the boring parts i.e. descriptions of the weather and the buildings, and you make it through to the end, you will recognize what this book is. It’s a labor of love and an ode to the golden era of detective fiction with a bonus spin of a diverse character.
So let me start at the beginning. Eric is a millionth generation, okay like third or fourth, member at this military club in London in 1924. He’s a World War I veteran, and he’s also half Chinese. But because his English father was a member of this fancy gentleman’s club, he’s also a member. And despite the fact he is racially profiled at every turn and a lot of the members aren’t kind to him, Eric feels something of a debt to the club. He cares about its members and what happens to them. When a friendly wager turns into a murder, Eric steps and to solve the crime.
Yes, the descriptions of the buildings were boring. But the author does a really good job, the more I think about it, of building a cast of supporting characters who are three-dimensional and realistic enough to be able to be told apart. I hate when you have fifty side characters who are all similar in nature and you don’t know who is who. Here we had a bunch of war veterans, who turned out to have a lot of background and history, but I could still tell you who is who.
Of course, big bonus points for having a Chinese character in the 1920s. The author doesn’t let you forget that Eric is different and all his interactions, negative ones for the most part, art done in a way that makes them seem sadly realistic without being over-the-top and fake sounding. At one point Eric wishes for a detective novel with a Chinese hero. I feel like the author wrote that for his younger self.
The other thing about this book is that it is clearly the author’s pride and joy. I almost want to delete the first line of my review because I can just picture Mr. Huang laboring over this book for years, enjoying the research and bringing his love of detective fiction into his own book. This was not written in a rush. The author was probably sitting in a cozy office overlooking a body of water in the fall with a pot of tea at his elbow and a loyal dog and his feet. His family probably read chapters of it after dinner and critiqued it and tried to guess who done it.
Arguably there were clues they are so the reader could guess who did it, but as I’ve already admitted, I wasn’t reading very closely at times. So I cannot fault the author’s writing, the story, or the unique twist on mysteries that still manage to remain true to form. It was just the pace that slowed me down. And honestly the last 80 pages are so were much better paced… so I will probably give this a 3.5 out of five stars because there’s a lot of good in it if you make it to the end.
BUT. If you are a well hydrated reader with nothing else to do, and you skim a little bit of the boring parts i.e. descriptions of the weather and the buildings, and you make it through to the end, you will recognize what this book is. It’s a labor of love and an ode to the golden era of detective fiction with a bonus spin of a diverse character.
So let me start at the beginning. Eric is a millionth generation, okay like third or fourth, member at this military club in London in 1924. He’s a World War I veteran, and he’s also half Chinese. But because his English father was a member of this fancy gentleman’s club, he’s also a member. And despite the fact he is racially profiled at every turn and a lot of the members aren’t kind to him, Eric feels something of a debt to the club. He cares about its members and what happens to them. When a friendly wager turns into a murder, Eric steps and to solve the crime.
Yes, the descriptions of the buildings were boring. But the author does a really good job, the more I think about it, of building a cast of supporting characters who are three-dimensional and realistic enough to be able to be told apart. I hate when you have fifty side characters who are all similar in nature and you don’t know who is who. Here we had a bunch of war veterans, who turned out to have a lot of background and history, but I could still tell you who is who.
Of course, big bonus points for having a Chinese character in the 1920s. The author doesn’t let you forget that Eric is different and all his interactions, negative ones for the most part, art done in a way that makes them seem sadly realistic without being over-the-top and fake sounding. At one point Eric wishes for a detective novel with a Chinese hero. I feel like the author wrote that for his younger self.
The other thing about this book is that it is clearly the author’s pride and joy. I almost want to delete the first line of my review because I can just picture Mr. Huang laboring over this book for years, enjoying the research and bringing his love of detective fiction into his own book. This was not written in a rush. The author was probably sitting in a cozy office overlooking a body of water in the fall with a pot of tea at his elbow and a loyal dog and his feet. His family probably read chapters of it after dinner and critiqued it and tried to guess who done it.
Arguably there were clues they are so the reader could guess who did it, but as I’ve already admitted, I wasn’t reading very closely at times. So I cannot fault the author’s writing, the story, or the unique twist on mysteries that still manage to remain true to form. It was just the pace that slowed me down. And honestly the last 80 pages are so were much better paced… so I will probably give this a 3.5 out of five stars because there’s a lot of good in it if you make it to the end.