The Trials of Marjorie Crowe - C.S. Robertson - ★★

AUTHOR: C.S. Robertson

GENRE: Murder Mystery

RATING: 2 stars.

In a Nutshell: A mystery-drama with mild paranormal shades and a quirky aged lead character. The plot idea had great potential. Should have worked better for me, but the execution didn’t leave me happy. This is an outlier review.

Story Synopsis:

Sixty-something Marjorie Crowe has lived alone in a little Scottish village for twenty-five years. Yet, all the villagers know about her is that she is a creature of habit and a recluse. Her past life is a mystery. And her present habits cause many to feel that she’s a witch. So they gladly leave her alone, though they do talk about her behind her back, and she knows it.

Living in her cottage on the edge of the village, Marjorie has a fixed routine for every day, planned down to the second. This changes the day teenaged Charlie McKee is found hanging on the outskirts of the village. This is the first day that Marjorie is seven minutes late returning from her morning walk. Locals see her with a shocked look on her face and scurrying away faster than usual. Speculation begins that she has something to do with the boy’s death.

With no one to support her or accept her reasoning, it is up to Marjorie to save herself.

The story comes to us in Marjorie’s first person perspective.

Marjorie is the lynchpin of the plot, and as the first person narrator, it is she who takes us through the events that occur over the course of the story. The problem with this is that Marjorie is a highly unreliable narrator. She chooses to ramble to us readers about her inner thoughts and worries, but when it comes to the facts, she hides much and twists most of what she reveals. I am not fond of the unreliable narrator trope when it is executed this way. Deliberate manipulation of facts just to keep us in suspense gets annoying.

Not only does she NOT function as a reliable narrator but she is also not a reliable or likeable character. Her sketching is quite haphazard. She is confident in one scene and shaking with nerves in the next. She sometimes talks to the police about her suspicions and yet she doesn’t reveal crucial details to them. She is often afraid to go out in the village after the accusations begin, and yet she goes all alone to the house of whomever she suspects and confronts them without anyone’s help. She uses her impulse more than her brains and handles almost the entire investigation by herself despite the presence of two supportive police officers. In short, Marjorie is a typical contemporary thriller FMC in all ways except for her age. (Actually, her age is also just a number in the book – it is hardly ever incorporated well into the plot except in one scene.) Is it any surprise then that I couldn’t connect with her? Unreliable narrator + amateur sleuth = Loads of eye-rolling!

The only positive aspect of Marjorie’s character was her “witchy” tendencies. Her knowledge of herbs and remedies, her respectful approach towards nature, and her belief in the unexplainable is strongly rooted. I wish these elements had been explored more because she had great potential as an actual “witch.”

As a story, the premise could have worked wonders. The book straddles many genres – mystery, thriller, paranormal, witchcraft and drama. This weakens the core focus. The pacing is terribly slow, not a good sign for such a story. Despite the extensive development, there are many plot gaps, especially but not only connected to Marjorie’s past history and how she came to live in that village

The contemporary timeline, based in 2024, is interrupted often by flashbacks from the past, some of which date centuries ago. These focus either on past witch hunts or on mysterious happenings in the village from a few years ago. The witch hunts are sad to read, but they add nothing to the actual storyline. The village flashbacks are better connected to the plot, but they aren’t clarified well at the end.

I was keen to see how a woman who is a loner and a murder suspect clears her name. But the execution is so jumpy that I couldn’t focus properly on the plot. There is a lot of repetition, not in the writing but in the events. It feels like the same things happen on loop almost throughout the book, except for the ending, which is a typical extended infodump - a boring feature of so many murder mysteries.

On the other hand, the village is described excellently. The setting is written so well that you can actually picture the scenes in your mind. Some of the settings are based on actual locations. The one that is derived from the real-life Mexican island (won’t go into spoilers) is the creepiest.

The nature of the villagers is also like that of a typical small place, where there is loads of gossip and nose-poking. I wish the portrayal had been more balanced because most people in the village were cast only in negative shades.

It was nice to see an Indian-origin character as one of the investigating officers. Through her arc, and through Marjorie’s story as well, the plot tackles the theme of racism. What was ironic though is that when Marjorie’s first person narration talks of her, she sometimes refers to her as Indian or Hindu. This is also racism, though softer. True inclusivity means that you focus on the person and not on their ethnicity or religion during your interactions.

A part of me feels like this book might have clicked better for me if written in third person as the ramblings could have been avoided and I would have got to see more direct action. Then again, if Marjorie is unreliable, even that approach wouldn’t have worked. The storyline was great but the handling seemed superficial to me.

That said, most readers seem to have enjoyed this witchy mystery, so I am very much the outlier. Do read other reviews before you take a call on this novel.

My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Trials of Marjorie Crowe”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t work out better.