“Santa Clawed,” by Rita Mae Brown

FM's ratings:

1. Premise 8
2. Prose 5
3. Plot 6
4. Characters 7
5. Overall 6

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!

This novel is a curious mix of fine attributes and unfortunate attributes. As a mystery, in the standard sense, it works quite well, although if you're one of those mystery readers who like to try and figure out the killer, the author doesn't really give you a fair chance. It's just not very clever, and too much critical information is saved until far too late. The worst thing about the prose is not the wording, phrasing, dialog or any of that. It's the "chit-chat" filler, the excessive attention to meaningless details like who wore what, how the room was decorated, and so on - all the "written-for-women" trivia that one hopes one won't have to deal with much in a Cozy Mystery. On the whole, I have seen very little of this from most Cozy Mystery writers. The only other one that comes to mind is Mignon F. Ballard. The trademark animal dialog by Brown is almost embarrassing in its attempt to depict how our pets might actually converse if they could. And the title? I can't recall a single reference to Santa Claus in the entire book. Maybe I missed one. The plot, too, is marred chiefly by the addition of throw-away scenes that add nothing to the story-line; entire chapters of "character-development" that fails to deliver. Someday I should read a book by this author that isn't a Christmas-themed book, to see if maybe that's the reason for these flaws. For now: NEXT!