Stiff News

Stiff News, Catherine Aird, 1998, St. Martin's Press. Genre: Mystery. 227 pages. Finished 3/11/2010.

LesOpinion: The best thing about this book was the author photograph. Despite the fact that the book was mediocre at best, I liked it simply because I decided Catherine Aird would be a hoot to have tea with. Although this is the only Aird novel in the Field Memorial Library, apparently it's about the 859th book in a series about Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Calleshire Constabulary. It's one of those literate, fussy little English village mysteries replete with rampant quoting of Shakespeare, references to Kipling that just went whipping over my head, and delicious words like hortatative, wadi, and dirk. Unfortunately, I think my mind was so obliterated by my recent expedition through the tawdry world of Elizabeth Adler that I could barely keep track of the goings on.