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Jan 2007 Left to me by my visiting, Book-addict Mother.
I can't recall having any strong emotions elicited by the story. I was interested though; There were any number of parts where I was curious about what would happen next, or what else would be revealed to the reader, or about how some of the characters would react. I liked the way that there was little graphic violence, excessive bloodletting, or... fights with anything more lethal than words. I have not read many murder-mystery books, so I don't know if that is unusual, but I think it might be. The little violence that was done was what I would expect from a real murder, and the one single shot with a gun was accurate, mortal, and not in any way glamorised.
As I've said, some of the characters were quite interesting, and I was always eager to find out more about them. The story it's self was a good Who-Done-It, to my mind, and left me guessing until the very end. Ah yes, the end. When the murderer unofficially chats with the chief inspector, and we find out who he is. And we find out that there's not the least bit of evidence against him. He tells the inspector, off the record, that the search for the murderer need go no further. He's not going to turn himself in, but he's not dangerous. It was a passionate act of violence, to give him revenge for things long ago, and it was only chance that it killed her. But... with no evidence at all... Both he and the inspector knows that nothing could ever be proved.
As an ending, I found it to be a little unsatisfying. The murderer has some regret over what happened, and that's that. The book was all right, now I'm curious what I wrote about the other mystery book by this author that I've read. Did I review it or not? It seems not.
I don't remember when I read An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, but it was in the past few years. It was again centred about a woman, but this time she was the detective and not the victim. -At least not to begin with. The people who didn't want her looking about, as well as the murderer, made some attempts to put a stop to her inquisitiveness. I can't do much comparing between the two books though, as it's been such a time since I read the other one. She didn't give us the same plot with different place names, and she also didn't use some of the same stock characters. (Not that any of her characters were particularly "stock.") From what I can retrieve from my memory, I think that A Certain Justice held my interest more, and made me feel closer to the action and intrigue.