A Review By Frances Smith

Penny Freedman is the local author who was invited to talk about her book at the recent “Lock in” at Kenilworth Library to celebrate World Book Night”  This is her first crime novel and she plans to write more about some of the characters she introduces in “This is a Dreadful Sentence”.

With unashamed influences of well-known successful British crime writers, particularly Agatha Christie, this novel has many of the elements of the traditional crime story.  There is a dead body, it is found in a library (albeit a college library – a rather more mundane setting that the traditional grand country house!) and there are plenty of suspects and red herrings strewn about.

The amateur sleuth is the college English tutor, Gina Gray.  Earlier in her career Gina had been a schoolteacher and DCI David Scott who is leading the murder investigation turns out to be a former pupil of Gina’s from that time.

 Although I enjoyed this book, rather too much time is spent on the back story of the various characters, particularly the family of Gina Gray.  The fact the Gina teaches English as a Foreign Language to a group of students from a wide variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds certainly adds an unusual touch.  The unique structure of our language and the various pitfalls it causes non-native speakers forms an important part of the plot, but the strained relationship between DCI Scott and Gina Gray is a rather obvious ploy to allow for future books.

Recommended for crime fiction lovers such as myself, I read this very quickly, enjoyed it and found the denouement satisfying if not particularly original.