The House of Seven Mabels: A Jane Jeffry Mystery (Jane Jeffry Mysteries) [マスマーケット]

In the latest of a chain of good ideas that turn out badly, Jane and her sidekick Shelley Nowack get roped into acting as decorators for a friend who is remodeling a Victorian Monstrosity. An iffy proposition from the start, the project goes increasingly sour as Jane and Shelley discover that the contractor is incompetent and the work is being sabotaged by persons unknown. Soon enough someone turns up dead and to protect their own interests -- as well as their skins -- the two friends turn their talents towards solving the crime.

The premise is not a bad one, but the work as a whole borders on the incoherent, lacking discernable pattern and full of random detail that adds nothing to the plot. The characters are lackluster and their motivations, where they appear, do not contribute to the mystery. Many of the situations and characters are stereotyped. I was particularly put off by the portrayal of feminism, which poked mean-natured fun at the concept and seemed to say that only whining incompetent women would embrace the title, while real women have no need for that kind of nonsense.

I also felt that the job-site setting was poorly researched and inaccurately portrayed. With a husband in the building trades, I could not help but wonder how anyone in his or her right mind could have been roped into such a situation in the first place. That such a disaster as the remodeling project was allowed to continue as long as it did without the homeowner's taking action stretched my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

Jane and Shelley spend lots of time doing random things that have nothing to do with the matter at hand, almost as if they don't find the actual crime very interesting. I'm sorry to say, it's not. To anyone paying attention, the solution is evident from about chapter five. This would have been okay if the book had put together successive pieces of the puzzle in a slow revelation of complex motive and complex relationships, but it didn't. Jane literally stumbles on the solution by accident in what can best be called an anticlimax.

I was still amused by this book and I give it three stars rather than two because I like the series and care about the characters. But it's a disappointment.

Feeling bored and restless (Jane is suddenly confronted with the fact that soon her house will be empty of children and that she has yet to accomplish anything noteworthy besides being a good mother), Jane Jeffry reluctantly agrees to help her best friend and neighbour Shelley tackle the redecorating of an old Victorian house in their neighbourhood. The house is an eyesore and should have been torn down long ago. But now, incredibly rich and recently divorced Bitsy Burnside (a woman who usually gives Jane heartburn) has decided to restore and renovate the house and use it for business purposes. And she wants Shelley and Jane to do the redecorating. Jane is leery but Shelley is excited at the prospect of shopping at someone else's expense. And so Jane soon finds herself a reluctant partner in this latest enterprise. But too many things about this project cause both Jane and Shelley to wonder if it would be wiser to pull out fast -- for example, gung-ho about certain "feminist" ideas that she has picked up, Bitsy has decided to hire an all female crew of workers (Jane and Shelley are not at all certain about the wisdom of that particular move); the contractor, Sandra Anderson, strikes them as being both incompetent and strange; and someone has been playing a series of dangerous pranks on the workers. And the pranks result in a death...

The saddest thing about this book was that it mirrored Jane's feelings of restlessness and boredom -- that spark of lively humour that characterised previous Jane Jeffry novels was completely absent. Add to that the fact that Shelley's character has somehow gone beyond ordinary bossiness into the realm of almost unpleasant, and I began to wonder if Jill Churchill had actually written this book! The mystery went no where for much of the book: Jane and Shelley would take a stab at 'interviewing' the suspects, and then do other things (shop, eat, garden, etc) and then look at the mystery from different angles before giving up for a good night's sleep.And when they finally crack the case, it is because Jane stumbles onto the answer by accident -- no taxing of the 'little grey cells.' But my biggest criticism was that Jill Churchill stereotyped the so-called 'feminists' in this novel. They were the usual short-haired, strident, angry male haters who may be lesbians, that the main stream media usually portrays all feminists to be.

Unfortunately "The House of Seven Mabels," does not compare well, esp when you consider the previous Jane Jeffrey mystery novels (those were real gems). And that is a real shame.