This is a cozy mystery set in and around Oxford, investigating the death of a professor who was writing an anti-woke book. The setting and topic appealed to me, but unfortunately, this was a huge miss for me for many reasons.

Most importantly, the writing in this book is not good. It's choppy to the point of incoherence, with the author jumping from one thought to the next without any kind of transition or logic. Sentences are often too long and incredibly convoluted, with lots of parentheses and dashes to insert or add information. There are even instances where the author uses parentheses and dashes in the same sentence, creating a paragraph-long nearly indecipherable word soup. On top of that, many words and phrases are used incorrectly. The dialogue is clunky. The inner monologue of the main character feels unnatural. Overall, the writing is so poor that it made it impossible for me to feel immersed in the story at any point.

Almost all of it is also telling rather than showing. The first chapter, for example, is a dense and inelegant infodump, with an enormous amount of names and backstories being thrown at the reader in a short amount of time. The rest of the book isn't much better. We are constantly told things about Eve and other characters, but we rarely actually see those things manifest in the story.

My last complaint is the blatant soapboxing. The author beats you over the head with her messaging over and over again. The worst thing is that I actually agree with everything the author is trying to communicate (about feminism, abuse of power, anti-wokeness, etc.), but it was done in such an unsubtle way that I only felt annoyed. Many of the statements were incredibly basic, like telling the reader that women have been oppressed by men for millennia, without adding anything new or any fresh insight. Moreover, I read fiction in order to see this kind of commentary illustrated in the narrative, not given as a lecture.

Two stars because I appreciate the author's intention for this book. Sadly, I did not enjoy the execution. However, if the summary appeals to you, by all means check it out for yourself.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC, which I received in exchange for an honest opinion.

A decidedly underwhelming read. I was hoping for an intelligently conceived plot, worked around sharply imagined characters and settings, and realized in distinctive and well-wrought prose. After all, the author is a university lecturer in English literature with a published monograph on Milton.

Instead I labored through a threadbare story involving the missing final manuscript of a dead white male (with all the unsavory associations of that term that the highly woke and progressive author is able to inflict on him). The suspects are initially presented as feisty and artsy women, with the obligatory gay couple thrown in to round out the stereotypes. By the end, of course, all liberal pieties will be honored and all fragile sensibilities soothed.

Beer evidently thinks that the way to the riches of bestsellerdom is to condescend to the unwashed by writing in flowing cliches. Nothing original here, no arresting phrases nor interesting diction. The reader is further disrespected by the author's occasional aggressive flashes of her own political agenda and woke attitudes. (Poor Jordan Peterson is name-checked.)

To adopt the author's own nakedly identitarian stance: if you are a college-educated woman of politically progressive inclinations, pleased to be catered to by a credentialled superior, this book will flatter you. If you are a thinking male (or, actually, person) who hopes for literary qualities and a clever plot from even genre-literature, this is not for you.

ARC provided by the publisher and Netgalley.

3.75 stars

An intelligent and thoughtful mystery, featuring Dr. Eve Brook, an academic writer who has been hired to finish a manuscript by a recently deceased writer. But nothing is simple in this plot. As it turns out, no one knows where the manuscript is, or if it even exists. And the dead author was a controversial figure, an uber conservative anti woke zealot who may or may not have died of natural causes.

Eve is intrigued. She is a bit of a loner and likes to have things neatly finished up. So she begins investigating, supposedly to find the manuscript, but along the way she talks to the victim's wife, son, long lost daughter, colleagues and doctor. More and more questions arise. Who would have wanted him dead?

Eve is a quirky character who mostly keeps to herself but somehow is pretty skilled at drawing information out in interviews. There lots of surprises and Eve's original task shifts into something altogether different as she follows the trail to the end. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

We meet Eve on a train platform, which is just where she likes to be. She's thinking about how she'd rather be catching a train in a different location where it's not the tail end of winter, but maybe this journey will help her get there. She's on her way to meet a publisher so she can embark on a new project. Eve is a ghostwriter of sorts--her current project is all about pork. That is, she trying to make readable an autobiography of a rich guy who made his money from pork. This new project promises to be more interesting and perhaps lucrative enough to pay for a train trip in a sunny, warm location. She's been asked to do finish up a book by an infamous guy, recently deceased, who made his name by spewing his racist, misogynist ideas all over the place. His book--a diatribe against 'woke'-- is nearing the publication date. There's a problem though. The publisher and the literary executor don't actually have the manuscript. They want Eve to find it, polish it up, and get it back to them. Things get weird pretty quickly, though, and nothing is as straightforward as she thought it would be. Where is the manuscript? And did this guy really die of natural causes? Eve won't stop until she gets the answers she's looking for.

When I saw the description of this book, I was intrigued. When I read the book, I was delighted. It's a wonderful, unique, kind of quirky, cozy mystery. Eve is a woman who loves trains, travel, notebooks, and words. She's smart, compassionate, and self-aware. She's a vegetarian who bicycles, walks, and uses public transport instead of owning a car. She's built a life for herself on her own terms. I quite enjoyed spending time with her. The mystery aspect of the book was well done and unusual in the cozy genre in the sense that the primary mystery is about the book and the deceased person and how he met his end is somewhat secondary to that. I enjoyed the literary aspect of the plot and how the various people Eve meets in the course of her investigation fit into into the web of relationships around this odious individual. The setting has a bit of a traditional mystery vibe, but it captures the current moment exceptionally well. I'm so glad I discovered this book. The description mentions that Eve is embarking on her first mystery, so I hope that means there will be a second mystery at some point. If there is, I'll snap it up.