I vote with reviewer 'persnickity' - this book was so badly written (never mind it having so many elements way too similar to Dorothy L. Sayers' works) that I couldn't even get halfway through reading it. Roberts seems to have missed the part of writing class where you're told to bring out the background of the characters as part of the action, not to burden the reader with great thwacking lumps of unrelieved explanation. If this was intended as an 'homage' to Sayers' novels, I hope Dorothy L. rises up from the grave and tells Roberts to make up his own characters and pay better attention in writing class.If anyone wants to read something more like real Sayers, try the ones co-authored and written from scratch by Jill Paton Walsh - Thrones, Dominations; A Presumption of Death; and The Attenbury Emeralds.