The Death of a Much-Travelled Woman: And Other Adventures with Cassandra Reilly

Rating:
Summary: Double bonus:travel and mystery writing in one volume.
Review: The Death of a Much-Travelled Woman consists of 9 stories about the intrepid translator, traveller and amateur-sleuth Casandra Reilly. Cassandra has appeared in two earlier novels; Trouble in Transylvania and Gaúdi Afternoon. These stories, or adventures, are more about literary puns and feminist fun than about suspense. Your flesh doesn't exactly creep when Cassandra finds the body,in fact there often is no body to find at all. Instead, you laugh when she helps bury the deceased poetesses` bones, or at writers who resort to all kinds of shady methods including attempts of murder to promote their books.

Wilson uses the detective genre in a humorous way to deal with serious feminist issues like the invisibility of women's writing and of women writers, and of men taking advange of women's talents, whether they are poets or book-sellers. These are issues that have existed since the time of the Brontës, at least.

I recommend the collection to readers who are fond of literary quizzes, of travelling (Wilson obviously knows Europe well) and of a good laugh. Like all story collections, they should be savoured separately and not read in one sitting.