Dr Elizabeth Pimms is the main character in Olmec Obituary, and it's no coincidence that she has much in common with the author, L.J.M. Owen.
Australian author L.J.M. Owen is trained in archaeology and librarianship as is her character Dr Pimms, who comes to life quickly and easily on the page.
Forced to move back to Canberra and leave her archaeology work behind was a hard decision for Pimms, however I loved learning about her life as a librarian. (In fact, I wish the entire book had been set with her in the library, working her way through the rotations).
Olmec Obituary is essentially a crime novel come cozy mystery (with stunning cover) where Dr Pimms will need all of her skills if she has any hope of unravelling a 3,000 year old mystery.
I enjoyed this debut, but two things kept me from rating it higher. The first being the few chapters set 3,000 years ago. The dialogue between the characters seemed very 21st Century, and even though I have no knowledge of the Olmec people, I struggled to believe that they would behave as we do, with children begging: "can we? pleeease" to get what they want.
My second issue was the number of times the character's cats were mentioned. If you love cats, then you'll love these additions to the novel, but I just found them repetitive.
Olmec Obituary is the first in the Dr Pimms Intermillennial Sleuth series of nine planned books, and I'll be giving away a copy very soon, so stay tuned to win a copy for yourself (valued at RRP $29.99).
My rating = ***
Carpe Librum!
Thank you for this review. I will put this book on my TBR Liist.as I have a penchant for new Australian authors thanks mainly to the Australian Author Challenge.
ReplyDeleteThat's great to hear May. I also participate in the Australian Author Challenge, how are you going so far? I just need one more male author to complete my challenge. By the way, if you enter my giveaway, you can win yourself a free copy of Olmec Obituary for your TBR list :-)
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