Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Book Review: Rumpelstiltskin by Ed McBain (1981)

Rumpelstiltskin is the first Ed McBain book I didn't like. Not Evan Hunter books--heaven knows the distaste I have for Last Summer--but the first Ed McBain book. I've read quite a few.

It's an early Matthew Hope novel. I don't like the series as much as the 87th Precinct series, to be honest, and I get all of the Florida color I need from Travis McGee novels. But it's not the series that does it for me.

The plot of the book's okay. A former pop sensation (whoops, rock since it was in the 1960s) is going to make a comeback at a small bar. She opens to bad reviews, and then gets killed. Matthew Hope, who spent the hours before her demise having curtain-climbing good sex with her, is briefly a suspect. The deceased had a trust fund due to pay out in a matter of days, so her father and her ex-husband make good suspects, with each standing to benefit depending upon the fate of the dead woman's daughter, kidnapped at the time of the murder, don't you know?

No, the plot's all right, it's the execution thereof that lacks. The book is paced poorly, and there's no pressure on Hope. He's a suspect, but he's cleared quickly. So he's got lots of time to meet new people, have a little wall-scarring good sex with another attorney, and jet to New Orleans for....well, his daughter's around, so no sex, but just foreplay to the blossoming intrattorney relationship.

Meanwhile, the author fits in his characteristic asides, but they're rather clumsy. There's a three page treatise about how a woman can have red hair and blonde pubic hair, including the relationship of melanin levels and genetics in the occurrence as well as the difficulty experienced by a woman in the 1960s and 1970s growing up with it and how it impacts her psychological and sexual development. Wow, that's quite a bit of research, Mr. McBain. Thanks for sharing your report with the class. Fortunately, the three pages end with some lamp-crashing, nightstand-tipping good sex.

It's a short novel, clocking in at about 215 pages. I slogged through it. If you're a big fan, you will, too, but I don't recommend it for someone looking for a good, light read.

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:14 PM