Series: Hangman’s Daughter #1
It’s 17th century Germany, and a small boy is found in the river, close to death. A midwife is blamed (mob mentality, 17th century) and locked up. The hangman, Jakob Kuisl is asked to torture a confession out of her for the good of the town. He doesn’t believe she’s guilty, however, so he more or less teams up with the young physician, Simon, to investigate. There are several gory torture scenes (and an execution), but it could have been much worse, really.
This one was hard to rate. I liked parts of it. Some parts were humorous although not laugh-out-loud funny (definitely snicker-worthy, though).
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I liked several of the characters when they weren’t being stupid. Everyone is stupid at least once in this book, I think. And therein lies the biggest problem that I have with it: too much of the plot is dependent on the characters being stupid. It’s like the author was trying to force things along. The book also contradicts itself at a few points, like when
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There are also some artificial time breaks, where you think you’re further along in the story, but the author cuts back in time so that you think that a different person is the unknown one performing an action. The solution to the mystery is fairly predictable and I kept expecting a twist and didn’t find one.
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Another problem was that the book didn’t always portray the mindset or worldview of the time in a sympathetic fashion. Some of the characters were more “progressive” and although I wouldn’t go quite as far as calling the book smug in its modern attitudes, it was certainly edging towards smugness (credit goes to Audio Book Junkie for the apt adjective). I’m not saying that a book can’t present more progressive (but not modern) attitudes in historical fiction (although I’d generally argue against presentism), but in this case the way it was done really didn’t help me to relate to the characters.
There was also a really weird flashback where the second person was used. It was just jarring. I’m not sure why the second person was used, especially since it hadn’t been used earlier in the flashback (and it could have), so it jumped out at me two-thirds (or whatever it was) of the way through the scene.
That said, if someone isn’t bothered by those kinds of things, I can see that person really liking this book. There is a mystery with an investigation, small-town politics, and a dash of romance.