Grey Matters

I don't know why I bothered to finish this book. It has potential, certainly, but fails to rise past the manuscript stage. Dulcie, a grad student in English lit, loves books, cats, and three-bean burgers. When another grad student in her program is murdered, Dulcie finds the mystery of his death intertwined with problems of authenticity in her own thesis. Unfortunately for the reader, Dulcie suffers from the humanities scholar's all too common malady - obsessive introspection. Clea Simon, the author, never let's us out of Dulcie's head, which is especially disconcerting since the book is written in the third person. My other bone of contention is the pacing. The murder takes place within pages of the opening chapter, Dulcie broods about it and her thesis for 200 pages, and then all is solved in three pages. Simon, I believe in an effort to spread suspicion among the characters, makes the characters needlessly complex but never gives them the substance to support such roles.