Book Review: Old World Murder by Kathleen Ernst (Chloe Ellefson #1)

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Chloe (most of the time), fun setting

Cons: Ending; obnoxious male characters

The Bottom Line: 

The setting is great

Want to like characters more

Book still engrossing

Decent Debut, But I Wanted to Like It More

Ever since I heard about Old World Murder, a mystery set at a living history park, I was looking forward to reading it because it sounded like a fun location.  Sadly, the result wasn't quite as good as I hoped it would be.

Chloe Ellefson is trying to leave painful memories behind her and start over by taking a job as the collections curator at Old World Wisconsin, a giant outdoor living history museum.  But her first day gets off to a bad start when a Mrs. Lundquist shows up and all but demands back an ale bowl she had donated 20 years before.  Chloe hardly knows what is in the collection at that point, and Mrs. Lundquist drives off disappointed only to die in a car accident just a few miles down the road.

Even though Mrs. Lundquist is dead, Chloe still feels an obligation to find the ale bowl.  Her curiosity is aroused when she can't find any trace of it.  It seems that someone is trying to erase it from all the records.  Why would someone want to do that?

The story is set in 1982, which threw me at first.  I had to keep reminding myself that Chloe couldn't just research stuff on the internet.  Once I got into that, I began to enjoy the setting and story.  Chloe is recovering from a severe bought of depression, so I did find the book darker than I often normally read, but it was compelling and hard to put down.  Sadly, the climax was weak.  Yes, everything was logical in the end, but it was just sudden.

I also had problem with the characters.  Specifically, none of the male characters with any page time are truly likeable.  Well, there is one - the gay best friend we only "meet" via phone calls.  The rest are marginally okay at best to downright horrid.  This even applies to the cop love interest.  While we get quite a bit of the story from Roelke's point of view, he steps over the line a couple of times.  I can understand him and why he behaves like he does, but I still didn't like it.

Combine that with some of Chloe's actions and statements early in the book, and I felt like I was being lectured on feminism early on.  Fortunately, that went away as I got into the story, and some of the things that happened later in the book actually felt natural.

I did like Chloe most of the time, and I also liked some of the females we met along the way.  Chloe has been through a lot, so she was easy to sympathize with.

Despite my complaints about Old World Murder, I want to give Chloe another try.  I'm hoping some of my complaints get ironed out as the series progresses.