Reading Journal Entry: Property of Blood, by Magdalen Nabb

I'm getting worried about Magdalen Nabb. Not that she doesn't have a cool name. I always thought that Magdalen was the best name ever. If I had a kid, and I hadn't converted to Judaism, I totally would have named him or her Magdalen.
As mysteries go, this ain't one of them. There's a kidnapping. The victim is either retrieved alive, or not. The kidnappers aren't members of the family or anything like that. What mystery there is seems to be the Marshal's weird-ass 'insights' into the family of the kidnapping victim. She's got a freaky daughter who doesn't really want her back. So what? Who cares? What does this have to do with the central mystery? Nothing.

But seriously, WTF is up with Nabb's family situation? In the last book I reviewed, there was a severely damaged young woman, the daughter of the murder victim, who had slept with her step-father and hated her mother. In this book, there's a seriously damaged young women who tries to seduce her mother's boyfriend, and hates her mother. Maggie, is everything OK at home? Do you have kids?

I will give her credit for this - the description of the kidnapping, which opens the book, is riveting. Incredibly vivid.

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