From RobertRotenberg.com ~ Old City Hall starts on a December morning in downtown Toronto, when an elderly East Indian man delivers his daily newspapers. Kevin Brace, Canada’s best-known radio personality, comes to the door of his luxury condo, blood on his hands, and whispers: “I killed her, Mr. Singh.” The ‘her’ is his young second wife, dead in the bath. One stab wound. When Brace refuses to say another word, even to his own lawyer, an apparently open-and-shut case takes on all the complexities of a full-blown murder trial.I was attracted to this book because it is a murder mystery set in downtown Toronto.
I enjoyed the writing style. Though there are lots of pages, I found the book moved at a quick pace. As the characters were cluing in on things, I got some at the same time and others I had to wait for them to be revealed.
Since I live in Toronto, I knew most of the places he referred to in the story such as Old City Hall, the Vesta Lunch, etc. You can see them all here. At times, he went into a lot of detail about where they are and the history which I found interesting. For someone not living in Toronto or knowing the city, I could see them finding it boring and saying, "So what!? Get on with the story!"
I must say that I didn't buy the ending ... my reaction was "Are you kidding!?". There were a few ways the ending could have gone that would have been believable to me.
But aside from the ending, I enjoyed the book and will keep an eye out for Rotenberg's next novel (this was his debut).
Hi Teena,
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a very interesting book, I wouldn't mind reading it. You have a very interesting blog, I love to learn about most any place in Canada and Toronto sounds very interesting. And your blog is very informative.
Thanks for commenting on my post today, no, I would not want to clean it either. But like one commenter said, if you can afford to buy a house like that, you should be able to afford to hire staff to clean it. That is the only way that I would want to live in something so large. Can you imagine cleaning nine bathrooms after you have had company? Not me!!!
Hugs, Cindy
It's too bad about the ending, the book was on my radar, and even though I don't live in Toronto, I'd probably be interested in the history. I'll still pick it up, but probably used. I just finished the Hunger Games trilogy - what a great read! Even though it was aimed at teenagers, I loved the story.
ReplyDeleteI haven't picked up a book in weeks. Need to get back at it.
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