Every Contact Leaves A Trace
Every Contact Leaves A Trace is the story of Alex Petersen and his wife Rachel Cardadine who are Oxford graduates. One evening they attend a dinner at their former college at the invitation of a tutor but when Rachel goes walking alone, she is suddenly murdered, leaving Alex at a loss to know what happened.
Despite beginning with a murder, barely nothing happens throughout this book, a man muses on the sudden death of his wife and gets a new outlook on her past via her affectionate poetry tutor. The smell of elitism and snobbery wafts off the page and none of the characters are particularly likeable. Widower Alex Petersen is terminally dull whilst Godmother Evie is laughably pantomime.
As the truth about what happened to Rachel finally emerges the book becomes entirely ludicrous. The motivation for and execution of her murder is ridiculous; overblown in its utter absurdity, and there is a total absence of believability. In reference to Evie it again lacks all credulity that she would cut Rachel off for her extremely minor in the relative face of it youthful transgressions or indeed be so close to inhuman in her lack of compassion to both widower Alex and god-daughter Rachel whilst living. More importantly until Alex begins to be filled in on the background and some semblance of truth emerges, this book, is I hate to say it, extremely boring or at least it was to me. Dull as dishwater I was both skimming and page counting willing it to just end already. 3/10
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