{"id":13160,"date":"2019-12-16T16:30:28","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T21:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13160"},"modified":"2019-12-16T16:30:28","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T21:30:28","slug":"the-geordie-murder-by-roy-lewis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=13160","title":{"rendered":"‘The Geordie Murder,’ by Roy Lewis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There\u2019s a feeling I get<\/strong> when I\u2019m reading a book and not really enjoying it, but it seems like I ought to be. Like one of those modern masterpieces they assign you in college, where you have it on authority that it\u2019s good, but you don\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure whether The Geordie Murder<\/a><\/em>, by Roy Lewis is like that or not. Or what that says about it, or me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eric Ward is a former Newcastle (England) policeman. He had to leave the force when he developed glaucoma. He\u2019s seeing again now after surgery, but he\u2019s become a lawyer. He\u2019s also married to a very wealthy younger woman, but refuses her offers to work for her company. He prefers to maintain a struggling private practice serving the \u201clittle people\u201d who get overrun by the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A local official asks for his help trying to make a case\nagainst a loan shark. Eric tries, but even the victims won\u2019t help. They distrust\nthe law more than they dislike the moneylender \u2013 and they\u2019re afraid of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, a young girl is kidnapped. Her non-custodial\nmother is the daughter of a tycoon, but her father is an unemployed fellow who happens\nto be one of the victims of the loan shark (some complicated back story is\nnecessary to justify this plot element). He promises Eric he\u2019ll give evidence,\nif only Eric can find his daughter again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My problem with The Geordie Murder<\/em> (which is an older novel, from back in the 80s) is that is was slow. It seemed to me the author was sauntering through passages that a more skilled mystery writer would reduce to a sentence \u2013 or skip entirely. Perhaps I\u2019ve been spoiled by recent trends in fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the climactic showdown \u2013 well, it was so low key that I\nfigured it was just a preliminary scene. But nope. Story over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author Lewis has a good feeling for characters, and knows how to avoid black and white portrayals. He also has a sympathetic heart for the urban poor. But he used too many words describing these things, in my opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your mileage may vary. Only minor cautions for subject\nmatter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a feeling I get when I\u2019m reading a book and not really enjoying it, but it seems like I ought to be. Like one of those modern masterpieces they assign you in college, where you have it on authority that it\u2019s good, but you don\u2019t get it. I\u2019m not sure whether The Geordie Murder, … Continue reading ‘The Geordie Murder,’ by Roy Lewis<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[893,2432,2866],"class_list":["post-13160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-eric-ward","tag-roy-lewis","tag-the-geordie-murder"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}