Jennifer's Books

Having seen Midsomer Murders sporadically over the years, I decided to finally make a concerted effort to watch the show in its entirety. I'm currently in the middle of season 6, with an odd episode of later seasons thrown in here or there for good measure. (My tv has Pluto tv, and they have a dedicated MM channel that shows the Tom Barnaby seasons on repeat, so if I can find nothing else to watch, I put it over there, hence the occasional out of sequence episode.)

 

Anyway, I decided I wanted to read the books they were based on, so I ordered this one to start out with. It did tend to follow the episode of the show based on the book pretty closely, with a few minor changes here and there. And despite knowing the who and the why, I still had a great time reading the book. The writing was concise, witty, and humorous, and the characterization made the characters really come to life.

 

Having already seen the episode of Midsomer Murders (and the show in general) based on this book, I had mental images for the characters all ready to picture as I read the book. And picture the tv characters while reading is what I did with pretty much everyone but Sergeant Troy. The Gavin Troy of this book is rather boorish, judgemental, and prejudiced*. Now, the TV version of Troy could also be rather judgemental at times as well (especially in the earlier episodes), but the way that Daniel Casey portrayed him leads one (or at least me anyway) to believe that he could and would learn and grow (and did so) over the years. To me, Book Troy's judgemental behavior was just malicious.

 

If it's not patently clear by now, I much prefer the TV version of Sergeant Troy.

 

*Having read only the one book, I am unable to say if Book Troy experiences any growth in future books.

 

I'm definitely going to read the other books in the series, and then the author's stand alone books, too, most likely.