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The Cruellest Month
The Cruellest Month | Hazel Holt
1 post | 2 read | 3 to read
Widow Sheila Malory has been looking forward to her stay at the Bodleian Library in Oxford as a chance to research wartime women writers and catch up with old friends from her college years. Her relaxing idyll is interrupted when a librarian , Gwen Richmond, is crushed to death beneath collapsed bookshelves.
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rwmg
The Cruellest Month | Hazel Holt
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Staying with an old friend in Oxford, Mrs Malory finds that her godson is more upset than his family realises about having found a body, crushed under falling bookshelves, because he believes it was no accident. She decides to investigate.

I would have loved the setting and characters in this cozy when it first came out around 1990 but now I found it rather meh, especially in its characterisation of gay men.

Reggie Were they the sassy sidekicks? 14h
rwmg @Reggie See spoilers below 12h
rwmg There were two gay men in the novel. One was the murderer and the other was a bitch who took great pleasure in telling the POV character how he and his then boyfriend had emotionally manipulated her 20 years before, thus wrecking some of her most precious memories of her university days.

No objection to gay men being the villains but not when they are the only gay men in the book.
(edited) 12h
Reggie Totally agree with you. 8h
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