The Story Knife: A Father Mark Townsend Mystery (Father Mark Townsend Mystery)

Rating:
Summary: Etched in Ivory
Review: For a first mystery, this is extremely good. The story drags at times, and more editing would have helped, but the author has vivid descriptions, lively action, and an unusual setting. The local touches are occasionally overdone; one more description of someone as "white" was about to make me scream, especially as I never thought of Eskimos as "non-white"! But the language, arts, and culture are handled well.

Rating:
Summary: An odd mixture of Mickey Spillane and Tony Hillerman
Review: The Story Knife is a bit of a disappointment. The descriptive history of Alaska and Native American culture is informative and sensitively treated, but the characterization of women and the language used to describe them is antiquated and shallow, even for this genre.For this line to succeed, the priest, the women and the married relationships require more depth and less cliche.Fr. Townsend is supposed to be the protagonist, but in actuality, the mystery solves itself. We need a little more wheat and a little less chaff.

Rating:
Summary: This book was a suspensful mystery with many facts.
Review: This book was a very good mystery, but it took a while to get into the suspense and excitement. I thought the author could've maybe gotten into a better mood and started things faster. The author also added a lot of unneeded information. Most of the facts about the Eskimos were interesting, but pretty much useless. The author definitely showed his knowledge about Eskimo lifestyle, but a lot of the Eskimo speaking and reference to it was not needed. If you read this book you will know a lot more about Eskimos, but a lot of the time you will just want to get to the story. I did like the author's description and I thought that it made this story interesting. The story was very exciting and kept you on the edge of your seat when the author stayed on the story line. I think that during the first one hundred pages, the author could've maybe made a small reference to who the exact killer could be so the reader could be thinking. I know that after the explanation of the murder and characters the book went no where for a while. A little hint or clue in these first pages could have improved this book enormously. After reading the book and getting a resolution to it, I think that it was pretty good. I think that the book could have been a little more exciting and shorter without as many Eskimo facts and information. The end feeling of this book is pretty good though, once the book got started it was very good. The only bad parts were at the beginning. I would recommend this book to people who like mysteries and would like to know a little Eskimo culture. If you want a book that gets right into the plot and reads fast, I think you should try a different book.