Long Black Veil
started out more in the horror genre, but moved quickly to a mystery.
While there are a lot of twists it was quite a let-down after the
tense beginning. The story revolves around an incident that happened
to a group of teens when one of them disappeared. There is a definite
lack of character development except for the transexual main character . He/She
is so self-absorbed that it is difficult to care much about all that
is happening. The other characters fade with little information. The
only thing I learned about Casey was that he was fat and liked to
eat.
There were too many
unresolved issues in the rather eye-rolling ending. One curiosity was
the odd spelling of miao, used instead of miaow or the most common
meow. It was weird and annoying, as was the character of
Quentin/Judith suddenly saying Miao. (Miao is a Chinese term
unrelated to cats.)
A story that started
off very well, but fell into a mediocre mystery.
