Book Report: The Stranger Diaries

45. Elly Griffiths, The Stranger Diaries (2018) (9/13/21)

I don't remember where I saw this book recommended (I was going to blame Barack Obama, whose recommendation of The Girl on the Train a few years ago I'll probably never forgive—but it wasn't him). I had read another Elly Griffiths book, the first in the Ruth Galloway series, The Crossing Places, and was only moderately impressed. But this one got a lot of good reviews, so I thought I'd give Griffiths another shot.

Well. It was okay. 

The story is told from three points of view: Clare, an English teacher at a school in Sussex; a detective, Harbinder, investigating the murders of two of Clare's colleagues (in quick succession); and Clare's fifteen-year-old daughter, Georgia. The three POVs are part of a "gothic" formula that is dictated, I guess you could say, by a framing story—a Victorian ghost story, written by the man who lived on the property that the school subsequently occupied. That ghost story, and other ghosts, are a recurring theme.

The overlapping POVs seemed unnecessary, and contributed to a certain thinness. The final perpetrator, well . . . okay. The writing is good, but I kept getting annoyed by repetition (a function of the overlapping narrators). 

I have nothing to quote. 

Basically, I'm happy to have another book in my reading challenge completed. And yes, this one did keep me engaged. But I will say yet again (I should have listened to myself the last time), I won't be seeking out Elly Griffiths again.