not actually a mystery

I don't often write reviews. Usually, if I don't care for a book, I figure I just wasn't the target audience and move on. The Devil's Dice, though, was so thoroughly awful that I felt compelled. It purports to be a murder mystery with a handful of weird historical links to add some interest. It's not. Not really, anyway. The killer was obvious from their introduction, as was their motive, and the secondary mystery, the "curse" was obvious from the get-go. The author must assume that the reader lives in a vacuum and lacks basic general knowledge. It was frustrating. As was the fact that the killer was a total trope. It was cheap, lazy writing.The narrator did her best and was generally pretty good, but her attempt at an American accent was painful.
On top of being a generally weak story, the author was clearly more interested in promoting their opinion on their pet cause than anything else. I didn't pay 14 bucks to be preached at for 11 hours, but that's exactly what happened. It wouldn't be a spoiler to say that the key theme of the novel was assisted dying. The author appears to be an ardent believer in the right to die, and she ham-fistedly promoted her belief throughout the entire novel. It was too much. Wherever you stand on the issue of assisted suicide,I think it's fair to say that no one wants to hear an 11 hour treatise on the subject when you had been sold a mystery! Any character who opposed assisted death was portrayed as a cretin who had no cogent arguments to offer in their defence. They were literal straw men. Which was bad enough, but the real kicker was the token disabled character. It was genuinely insulting. Her inclusion was for the sole purpose of making the lead character look humane, and to pay lip service to the position of those disabled persons who have their own very serious reservations about legalising assisted death. It was embarrassing to listen to. The author took a complex issue and distilled it into a single, purely emotional argument that was hammered home at least once a chapter, but honestly it felt like every other line.
If I had wanted to listen to a book about the ethics of assisted dying, I would have bought one marketed as such.

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