Honest Doubt (Kate Fansler Novels (Hardcover))

Rating:
Summary: Hello Woody, Goodbye Kate
Review: As an avid mystery reader, I grabbed Amanda Cross' "Honest Doubt" hoping to find something literate and engaging. The Cover read 'A Kate Fansler Novel," whom I hoped to add to my list of must-read dectectives. What I found was Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven a fat female detective hired to solve the murder of a pretentious Professor of English Literature. Woody enlists Kate's help to solve the murder as she feels totally out of her league in Academia. While Woody's constant references to her size is annoying;it is her worship of Kate's intellect that eventually made this novel a real bore. One wonders how Woody made it through Law School. The characters are annoying and poorly drawn and the plot convoluted. I Would like to see Woody's Character in another novel sans Kate and with less reference to her size.

Rating:
Summary: Honest Doubt
Review: I was extremely disappointed in this book. Having read all of the previous mysteries written by Amanda Cross, I was looking forward to enjoying her literate and witty style, a thought-provoking plot and interesting character development. This book fails miserably in all three areas. The style is turgid, the plot is almost non-existent with a cop-out ending and the characters are one-dimensional (although I'm sure that Woody would say that she had more dimensions that that--I really did get weary of all the references to her size). I can only hope that the author will go back to creating a well-crafted mystery next time around. But I will first check with other reviewers before buying another book by Cross so that I'm not burned again by purchasing another such boring and poorly written myster.

Rating:
Summary: Bored out of my mind
Review: This was my first Amanda Cross, and my last. The main character in this book detective Woody is pretty much incompetent and continues to talk about her size, which starts to get old around page 30. I did not really care about who killed the professor, and pretty much found all of the characters in the book uninteresting. I couldn't wait to finish this slow story to move on to something I actually wanted to read.