The Copenhagen Connection

Rating:
Summary: Fun mystery in wonderful Copenhagen
Review: Elizabeth Jones is flying to Copenhagen for a holiday, and is thrilled to meet on the plane her favourite author, Margaret Rosenberg, am edieval historian. She is less thrilled to meet Margaret's bad-tempered son Christian, but the two of them find themselves having to collaborate, reluctantly, in keeping up with Margaret in her adventures, and tracking her down when she dissapears. This is a fun mystery story, with lots of humour and lovely descriptions of Copenhagen. there is one puzzling passage though, where Margaret says to Elizabeth of the middle ages "women were for childbearing, they had no other role". If Margaret is meant to be an expert on the Middle Ages, she should know that this is quite untrue, women had many roles in the middle ages, and childbearing was only one of them. This was the last individual mystery story Elizabeth Peters wrote, at least to date, a pity as I like them much better than any of her series.

Rating:
Summary: Phony Copenhagen descriptions
Review: I guess Elizabeth Peters does not think the descriptions of locale in her books have to have anything to do with the actual places.
I thought this book would be a fun gift for my American friends, but I felt I needed to read it first.
Well, as I live in Copenhagen I started wondering as soon as the main characters get off the plane at Kastrup Airport and are driven in a limo through lush green fields to the city. There are no such fields on the road through that part of Amager, the suburb where the airport is. Then they drive past all the hotels as if they lay in a row like they may have on the list the author used. If anyone really drove past all those hotels, they would be on a circuitous hotel sight seeing tour all around the city. The hotel they end up staying at is so unreal. There is no such place here.
Well, since the whole style of the novel is such a fine mess of phony sofistication anyway, I just felt disgusted after those first pages.
Maybe if you do not want anything real, you can enjoy this nonsense.

Rating:
Summary: Awkward characterization, over-the top characters
Review: I was really looking forward to Elizabeth Peter's Copenhagen Connection, after really enjoying her Amelia Peabody Egyptian mysteries, but I found the audio book version of this novel to be tedious, and the characters simply rehashes of Peabody and Emerson from earlier works. This is the story of a plucky (and yet somehow preternaturally old), young woman named Elizabeth, who traveling to Denmark, gets mixed up with an eccentric author and her snarling son, and a mystery involving of all things, a bathrobe.

While Elizabeth is a nice enough character, the author fails to write convincing modern young woman. Instead, we get Amelia Peabody with a few colorful swear words. Added to this, she fails to write any emotional hooks which might make me care about the legion of stereotypical characters which haunt the REST of the book.. Christian (the romantic lead's) snarling and snapping, (come on, surely she can write other types of heroes?)was grossly unattractive to me. His over-the-top eccentric mother had my eyes rolling in pain at points. Surely a modern heroine like Elizabeth, could do better.

Perhaps this is my own fault, for prolonging the reading experience by listening to the audio version, but I found myself vastly disappointed with this novel. Perhaps the others are better?