Edinburgh Twilight (Ian Hamilton Mysteries Book 1)

I didn't have to read far into Edinburgh Twilight to determine that Carole Lawrence is a gifted practitioner of prose writing, capable of producing atmospheric, evocative descriptive passages. Reading a little farther revealed that this novel would feature a fairly standard cast of characters--a brilliant investigator with a tortured personal background, a superior whose grudging admiration he has earned, a loyal subordinate, and a creepy serial killer for an adversary--and a fairly standard police procedural/thriller plot which unfortunately developed too slowly to be really gripping. More unfortunate, though, were the anachronisms and inaccuracies in terminology that kept making me stop and say to myself, "Wait, that can't be right." A few examples: A woman in 1881, when the novel is set, couldn't have been working as a typist since typewriters didn't become standard office equipment till a few years later. A bruise would likely have been treated with an application of arnica or other liniment, not an icepack. A nearsighted person wouldn't have trouble threading a needle; close work is difficult for people who are farsighted. Whip stitch is used to close seams, not sew on buttons. A character couldn't have said he was "allergic" to dogs; the word didn't even enter the English language till the 20th century. The cumulative effect of these and other mistakes made it impossible for me to really enjoy this book. Assuming that, like me, other fans of period mysteries demand a reasonable degree of historical accuracy in their reading, the mistakes also make the book impossible for me to recommend.

One of the worst novels I have ever read, the characters are so artificial, the principal character gives out 5 pound notes in a tip this would represent about 25% of his annual salary. The dialect is current low life Scotland while in that period the dialect would be as in a Burns Poem, would be unintelligible to a modern reader.In the period homosexuality was a Penal Offence and the participants and there clubs would be well known to the police. I wonder why the ace detective never interviews friends of the murdered?.

I enjoyed the story but took two points off because of the many cultural and geographical errors only Edinburgh locals would recognize. I’m sure many readers would not be bothered by this but I grew up in Glasgow and lived in central Edinburgh for 14 years - and I’m s historian. Almost every page something would leap out at me as jarring because its not accurate. A local editor would have improved it greatly.

Ian Hamilton is an earnest police detective with a logical brain and deep emotional scars. He is determined to find the sadistic serial killer known as the Hollyrood Strangler. With the aid of a police sidekick, a savvy street kid, the best pickpocket in Edinburgh, a rotund librarian, a brawny brawler, Ian's aunt, and other assorted characters from both sides of the law, Ian gathers clues and bruises as the body count rises.The detective yarn kept my attention for a while, but then got rather muddled as threads of social issues and psychological pathos were woven into the plot. The detective yarn progressed to the expected ending, but it seemed to me that there were a number of loose ends left for the next Ian Hamilton novel to develop.Gritty detective fiction isn't one of my preferred genres, but I took advantage of a free-if-you-write-an-honest-review offer. I hope this review will be useful to someone.

I listened to this on audiobook and I'm pretty sure this is a case where I would've enjoyed the story more if I'd read it myself. The narrator's voice sounded a bit dry to me and though he did a pretty good job differentiating the voices for all the male characters, his attempts to do the female voices left a lot to be desired.As for the actual story, there's a serial killer in 1880's Edinburgh and D.I. Ian Hamilton, a man haunted by his own tragic past, tasks himself with bringing the killer to justice. I never quite warmed up to Hamilton. He quotes a lot of Shakespeare which was okay at first but grew progressively annoying the more he did it. He's also fairly rude to several characters who didn't deserve it. It also seemed to me that the major clues in the case came because of the efforts of other characters. It never really felt to me that D.I. Hamilton ever did much actual sleuthing himself, unless you count declaring that the second victim was killed by the same person even before seeing the body as proper detective work. The story also felt longer than it needed to be. I attribute part of this to the fact that the author gives life summaries to practically every one-off character that appears on the page. Overall I wasn't sold on the characters or the murderous plot but I may still give the second book a try when it comes out - though I'll read it myself to see if that makes a difference in my level of enjoyment and investment.

This book should come with a content warning. The correlation of sexual pleasure and murder is sickening.

I was really drawn to this book by the blurb, a detective story set in Edinburgh at the end of the 19th century. Murders to be solved without all the gadgets and gizmos of modern crime scene investigation and no DNA!! I really wanted to like Detective Inspector Hamilton and sometimes I did, but he failed my 'would I like to be stuck in a lift with this person' test with his frequent Shakespeare quotes. I did rather enjoy the cheeky chappy that was the urchin Derek McNair. I expected a slow pace but I'm sorry to say I found this dragged and I didn't get the build of tension that I was expecting.I received an ARC of Edinburgh Twilight via NetGalley and my thanks to the publishers Thomas & Mercer for that.

This book is set in Edinburgh so why has the editor used American spelling, punctuation and language? That's so annoying because it distracts the reader from any substance. For example, in Edinburgh we do not wear a vest over a shirt and indeed our vests do not have pockets. Americans do not wear waistcoats so one has to assume that is what the author meant.I am Edinburgh born and bred so would like to point out that there are a great many errors in the location of the city streets. For instance, one cannot walk down the High Street to the Castle. Nor is the National Art Gallery situated halfway up the Mound, on Bank Street as the author seemed to indicate. I am also a law graduate of the University of Edinburgh and would point out that we do not have "barristers" in Scotland; they are called advocates. The office of Coroner went out of existence in Scotland by 1800 at the latest, long before the setting of this book. As I'm currently living elsewhere in the UK I like to look for books in the crime category set in Scotland and particularly Edinburgh but I will definitely not be buying the other books set in Edinburgh by this author.

I did manage to finish this book...alas it was a great disappointment.....USA spelling....very poor characterisation of 'Scots' folk. very poor plot. Poor descriptions of Old Edinburgh. If a writer sets a fictional tale in a distant country then the research has to be VERY thorough indeed.

A detective novel is about the detail. Apart fom the very inauthentic language (americanisms all the time), The appalling geographical knowledge and major historical inaccuracies (watches, fish and chips etc etc) there are massive inconsistencies in the story. Things like leaving a business card (sic) at someones flat and then later asking them where they live. A sergeant who only has a couple of years service. I could go on.I abandoned the book eventually. Not recommended.

The basic premise and structure of the story are good but on almost every page there is a word or phrase which jars the senses, for example, an antimacassar is a piece of fabric which goes over the back of an armchair to protect it from the gentlemens’ hair oil and Bacchus was a Roman god, not Greek.Also the representation of the various dialects that is used in the dialogue is not only inaccurate but they tend to mingle with each other after a time, so that the origins of the speaker becomes confused. There are plenty of books on Scots dialects and how they may be written down but I would recommend that if the author is going to expand this series, as the title of this book suggest, she should keep the dialogue in standard English (not British which is a nationality, not an accent) and allow the reader’s imagination to determine for him/herself how the speaker’s voice might sound. Finally, there are,too many Americanisms permeating the book - no Scottish, or indeed British, person would have used the term ‘liquor cabinet’ to describe the place where the alcohol was kept.What a shame to have spoiled a good story with these blemishes which certainly would not entice me to read any further titles in the series, nor to recommend it to anyone else.

I could not finish this book. It was badly written with no sense of time or place. Edinburgh appears to be somewhere in the North of England. The written accents are dreadful and the story has no real fluidity. Too many Amercanisms.