Genre: Mystery
Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9780425275528
Berkley Publishing
294 Pages
$7.59; $2.99 Amazon
October 6, 2015
⭐⭐⭐
Ruth's beloved grandfather instilled in her a love of timepieces. Unfortunately, after her grandmother died and he remarried, Ruth and Grandpa Thom became estranged. She had wanted to reconnect after her recent divorce, but sadly they've run out of time. Her grandfather has been found dead after a break-in at his shop - and the police believe he was murdered.
Now Ruth has been named the heir to Grandpa Thom's clock shop, the Cog & Sprocket, in the small Berkshire town of Orchard, Massachusetts. As soon as she moves into the small apartment above the shop and begins tackling the heaps of unfinished work, Ruth finds herself trying to stay on the good side of Grandpa's bossy gray cat, Bezel, while avoiding the step-grandmother she never wanted. But as old secrets and grudges start to surface, Ruth will have to kick into high gear to solve the killer case before someone else winds up dead...
✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽
Ruth Clagan has just spent a week at a Vermont retreat, trying to decide what she wants to do with her life. Her marriage has recently dissolved, and she's estranged from her grandfather - partly because he never wanted her to marry her ex-husband, and partly because he remarried only two years after the loss of her beloved grandmother. But now she wants to reconnect, and sends him a postcard telling him so. But before she's able to see him, she receives a telephone call from an attorney who tells her that her grandfather - or G.T. (for Grandpa Thom) as she calls him, is dead - killed during a robbery, and the sheriff suspects it was murder.
Stunned, she returns to the small Massachusetts town of Orchard to find out what happened. She finds that while his wife received the house and its contents, she received her grandfather’s shop, the Cog & Sprocket, and everything in it. Ruth is overwhelmed by it all, and still doesn’t know if she’s going to stay or not. Fortunately, she has the help of G.T’s assistant Pat Reed, and unfortunately, she’ll have to work with G.T.’s widow Caroline, because she does the books and knows what G.T. was working on. While she may not be happy about the situation, she hasn’t got a choice. She's also inherited the shop's cat, Bezel, since she's going to be living in the apartment above the shop.
What Ruth does see is that there are clocks - so many clocks - filling the shop, and Pat tells her they're from the estate of Grover Winter, G.T.'s best friend. He bought them all at once, and had planned on repairing and selling them, with some of the profits to go to Grover's family. But since he died before he was able to do so, that task will fall to Ruth. If she decides to stay.
However, Ruth is curious to find out who killed her grandfather, and she hopes she can find the answers in the shop. But she'd better find out soon, because if she doesn't, Orchard might have one more death on their hands...
I have to say that for the most part I enjoyed this book, but I really didn't care about all the inner workings of a clock. It seems that would appeal only to those who are interested, and I've always felt that writers should realize if their books are going to appeal to a mass audience or a select few. Perhaps if there had been more on the mystery and less on clocks, I might have enjoyed it a whole lot more.
There were also a couple of things that bothered me. I get that Caroline inherited the house and its contents, but she had to have known that the quilt was made for Ruth by her grandmother, so I wondered why she didn't offer it to her. After all, would the loss of one quilt make that much of a difference? She also didn't ask if there was anything in the house that had belonged to Ruth's grandmother that she might have wanted. Wouldn't they have meant more to Ruth than to her? Especially since she'd never met the woman? It's little things like this that bring the reader to care about characters more.
Aside from this, the book was pretty much an easy read. It wasn't difficult to figure out the killer, although the reason why didn't become apparent until toward the end, which is fine. I understand her wanting to rebuild the clock tower, but that's not much of a reason to read the next book.
Unfortunately, most of the book was about clocks and the clock tower. If you remove these parts, there wasn't a whole lot of mystery left. Just when you'd start to get involved in the mystery, here comes another infomercial on the workings of clocks. Because of this, the book was finished quickly without too much thought.
However, since it is the first in a (very short) series, I may or may not read the rest of these books. All in all, not a bad book, but not a great one, either.
What Ruth does see is that there are clocks - so many clocks - filling the shop, and Pat tells her they're from the estate of Grover Winter, G.T.'s best friend. He bought them all at once, and had planned on repairing and selling them, with some of the profits to go to Grover's family. But since he died before he was able to do so, that task will fall to Ruth. If she decides to stay.
However, Ruth is curious to find out who killed her grandfather, and she hopes she can find the answers in the shop. But she'd better find out soon, because if she doesn't, Orchard might have one more death on their hands...
I have to say that for the most part I enjoyed this book, but I really didn't care about all the inner workings of a clock. It seems that would appeal only to those who are interested, and I've always felt that writers should realize if their books are going to appeal to a mass audience or a select few. Perhaps if there had been more on the mystery and less on clocks, I might have enjoyed it a whole lot more.
There were also a couple of things that bothered me. I get that Caroline inherited the house and its contents, but she had to have known that the quilt was made for Ruth by her grandmother, so I wondered why she didn't offer it to her. After all, would the loss of one quilt make that much of a difference? She also didn't ask if there was anything in the house that had belonged to Ruth's grandmother that she might have wanted. Wouldn't they have meant more to Ruth than to her? Especially since she'd never met the woman? It's little things like this that bring the reader to care about characters more.
Aside from this, the book was pretty much an easy read. It wasn't difficult to figure out the killer, although the reason why didn't become apparent until toward the end, which is fine. I understand her wanting to rebuild the clock tower, but that's not much of a reason to read the next book.
Unfortunately, most of the book was about clocks and the clock tower. If you remove these parts, there wasn't a whole lot of mystery left. Just when you'd start to get involved in the mystery, here comes another infomercial on the workings of clocks. Because of this, the book was finished quickly without too much thought.
However, since it is the first in a (very short) series, I may or may not read the rest of these books. All in all, not a bad book, but not a great one, either.
https://www.amazon.com/Just-Killing-Time-Clock-Mystery/dp/0425275523/ref
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2915962094
More on Julianne Holmes's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/h/julianne-holmes/
No comments:
Post a Comment