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BLAME! MASTER EDITION 2 by Tsutomu Nihei and Melissa Tanaka (Translator)
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Premeditated Mortar: 09/17/24

Premeditated Mortar

Premeditated Mortar by Kate Carlisle and Angela Starling (Narrator) (2020) is the eighth book in the Fixer-Upper mystery series. Shannon and her crew have been hired to convert a wing of an old sanitarium into a modern hotel. Before they can even begin there is controversy over the site that results in Shannon being attacked and a woman being murdered.

I really don't know where to begin with this book. It falls into the author's usual traps but also includes every single asylum trope and the two are in a tug of war with the reader stuck in the middle.

The first half of the book falls into the everything is just so glorious and beautiful. The grounds are stunning. The architecture is stunning. The place is calming and soothing and will be oh so perfect for the hotel, uwu.

What's this? A bricked up passage? Let's investigate. Let's not wait to do this properly. What's this? Unstable wall is unstable? Oh noz. Shannon nearly falls to her death! But it's ok because she's a brilliant and strong contractor!

But oh no! Here comes evil mc evil lady. She wants to cause trouble. Oh no! How dare she. Let's investigate. Oh noz, Shannon's been attacked by all those bricks left behind. Shannon, did your crew forget to pick up their mess?

But wait! The secret tunnel is a clue! Things at the asylum weren't as honey sweet as Shannon, et al are imagining. Some bad shit happened here in the bowels of the beautiful building. And of course the bad shit was more recent than anyone cares to think about and of course it's tied to what's going on now.

I try to give authors plenty of wiggle room. It's okay to have some misses in your hits. This one, though, has some absolute bangers of dumb passages. There's a section where Shannon and hotelier are checking out the elevators. The hotelier comments on how it's large enough she could put a bench in there. Shannon pipes up with the obvious observation that it had to be large enough for the gurneys. To which the hotelier says, "Wow, you're so smart!" or something similar. Shannon replies equally cheerfully, "I did research!"

Congrats on doing your research on the mysterious aspect of elevator capacity in hospitals. It's just such a dumb sequence. Haven't either of them been to a modern hospital where the same thing is true?

Once the bricked up passage way is revealed it's clear this book was going to go for a Gothic horror ending for the mystery. That mean's mistaken identities, wrongly imprisoned people, twins, evil parents, etc. It's all there in this entertaining dumpster fire of a mystery.

The ninth book is Absence of Mallets (2021).

Three stars

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