WALKING DEAD

Rating:
Summary: correction
Review: I want to correct the record here -- "lazy reviewer"'s review must refer to a different book, as "Walking Dead" does not have a heroine who is a feminist, but rather a male main character who is a scientist/researcher. It takes place on an imaginery caribbean island and involves moral dilemmas and adventure more than mystery. Well-written, with intriguing circumstances.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Mystery and More
Review: Peter Dickinson is my favorite mystery writer, so I'm biased, but this is one of his better mysteries--that's the best I can say because it's in the number 1 position along with about 6 others. His heroine is a fully realized Marxist/feminist of the 70s--completely individual, with almost infallible social/moral instincts and an elaborate reflective sense of justice and communal order (that is humorous to watch even while it teaches us to be more caring people). But she doesn't spend paragraphs preaching--she converses in a way Bakhtin would admire. She's also a neat mother, wife, sister.... I used to have a friend with a personality somewhat like hers--a constant delight. She's the best part of the book. Dickinson's specialty is spinning out a unique world in which the mystery unfolds, and here the world is her personality/politics.

But the mystery is really good, too. A lot of the book is devoted to her just figuring out what's going on, and noting the odd conjunction of events that comes from various directions into her life. The "villain" is truly nasty--but he's obvious, and the solution to the mystery is not (well, maybe it is if you can figure out Raymond Chandlers ahead of the game--the problem isn't variety of choices or arcane clues but labyrinthine motive). The plot works out in a pretty satisfying way.