Story on the Brain

It's almost painful to write criticism of any of Willis's work, since she's one of my top three favorite authors. I've been reading her books lately as I'm thinking a lot about close third person in my own work. She does it so well! First I read Blackout and All Clear over the weekend. Then I read Crosstalk because I got so stressed out from all the panic and fear and everyone being cold and wet and starving and frightened and the falling bombs and so on. And the time travel terrifies me, since it's been going wrong ever since Doomsday Book . How would anyone ever be brave enough to get into that machine after that? Well, okay, that's not fair. But to say why would give away the plot.  I have a lot of thoughts about Blackout and All Clear but that's for another post. Crosstalk is an interesting idea. It bothers me a lot of ways, though.  First big issue is that the heroine and main character, Briddey, does not drive the story in any way whatsoever. ...

This is going to be all spoilers, so look out. You've been warned. I was excited to read this book and enjoyed it to a certain degree the first time through, as I was wondering who committed the murder, but then I read it again and it all fell apart. The mystery makes no sense at all once you have read the book. Look at all the incredible logic flaws. The country house is set up so that it's essentially impossible that anyone else but the nine were there that night, with the power outage and the road blocked off by a downed wire and a power truck. But nobody from the nine themselves to the police ever suspect or investigate any of the nine. That is completely nonsensical. In a typical country house murder, yes, the situation is closed off so that we know the suspect HAS to be one of the people present. This does half of that and then everyone is inexplicably stricken with severe stupidity and they all go, "I don't know, burglars?" and shrug and just LET IT GO. No....