I made it to the 43% mark in this novel before I grew so sick of it that I couldn't stand to read anymore. No murder or anything like one had occurred by that point, and all the book had been was a rather poor tour guide of Budapest and Gyor. If I'd wanted that, I would have read an actual tour guide. I wanted a cruise ship murder and didn't get one! I'm reasonably sure there was one, but I was too bored to want to keep reading until it happened.
This is why I don't read these 'cozy' murder mysteries. First of all there's nothing cozy about murder and secondly, if anyone complains about my non-reviews, I can point them to this (and several others) where I did read all or part of the story and it was just as bad as I'd feared it would be. Many pages of this book were devoted to the author advertising all her other work, to a rather gauche and annoying degree. The story doesn't start until page 15. The contents is simply a list of chapter numbers (CHAPTER ONE, CHAPTER TWO, etc) which are tappable to get to the chapter, but then you can't tap back to the contents, so you're stuck there! I don't see the point of any of that.
I should have figured that a novel with a dumbass character name Like London Rose (apparently no relation to Tokyo) wouldn't be worth reading, and it wasn't, but this is the main character's name, and she's apparently going to have a series of endless murders which makes me want to run from her cruises rather than join one of them. Who would want to go cruising on a cruise line known for slaughtering passengers every cruise? The very premise is ridiculous.
Anyway, this is one of those cases where London ditches her fiancé and goes on the cruise as the social director, a role for which she frankly seemed inept to me. We learned precious little about each character, except for the one I am sure is on the chopping block for this cruise: an old, frail, and persnickety woman named Mrs Klimowski or something along those lines, who was obnoxious and who had an annoying toy breed dog which I am sure gets adopted by London at the end.
What we learned most about was the male interests London had, which were predictable and boring, and I had the sneakign feeling that one of them would be the murderer, but that's really just a wild guess. If London does adopt the dog, that would be another reason to ditch this series. I rarely read series and I won't look at one which features a pet on the cover or as a 'sidekick' to the 'sleuth' - in fact I won't read a murder mystery which has the word sleuth in the book description, because it sounds so pathetic and promises nothing save predictability and tedium.
The thing that really bothered me about London though, is that her last two boyfriends had each lasted a year despite her having zero interest in them. One has to wonder why she was even with them and that fact that she was, essentially, with them under false pretenses, makes me wonder both about her character and her smarts. In short, I didn't like London at all. That's another reason not to pursue this series and was one of the factors in my ditching this volume early.
This is yet another dumb-ass 'mystery' where someone entirely unqualified somehow seems to think it's incumbent on them to prove their innocence, but no! It's guilt that must be established, and unless a criminal investigation finds sufficient evidence to arraign you, you need do nothing save supply any information you may have about the crime that you're asked to do, and stay the fuck out of the investigator's way! It really is that simple! Anyone who doesn't do that is an interfering busybody and should be charged with impeding a police investigation! This book sucked majorly and the saddest thing about it all is that I was not surprised at all.
