Different Class

Different Class

  - Joanne Harris

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I loved everything about 'Gentlemen and Players' - the plot, setting, format, thrill and the battle of wits. This is not really a sequel, though it is set in the same school, and the protagonist is the same elderly teacher, Mr Straitley.

The plot here is also fraught with a great tension, gradually building up as the story progresses. However, it is very dark, with a theme of abuse, sadism and psychopathy running at its core. Due to this, I found it quite disturbing.

I love the way Joanne Harris writes, but the treatment of the plot in here left me dissatisfied, annoyed even. First was deliberate misleading the reader about the identity of the author of the diary - from the reviews and questions I collected that I wasn't the only one to make that mistake. Another one is that ominous buildup - a catastrophic event in the past developing into the current tragedy, but that event is not revealed until the end. I feel both of these have become a part of the pattern, at least in this series of work.

Several questions were left unanswered, and there was some expectation to find answers to some of them in 'BlueEyedBoy', but even after reading it, I am still perplexed. [Who actually was Mousy and what happened to him? What eventually became of Spikely? What was the motive of Harrington, and that of Winter?]