I’m just going to say it. I hated this book. It worked my last nerve. And if I hadn’t gotten as part of the Early Reviewers program and felt obligated to review it, I would never have finished it. I would have gotten a quarter of the way through and then decided there were better uses of my time.
The book had a lot of potential and I was actually excited when I heard I was going to be getting it. A Paragon of Virtue is the first book by Christian von Ditfurth to be translated into English. It’s a mystery (and I am a fan of mysteries) set in Hamburg and the events of the Nazi era swirl around the crimes being committed now. Now I am willing to give von Ditfurth the benefit of the doubt, and suggest that perhaps the book read better in German and something was lost in translation, but the writing was HORRIBLE. The characters seemed more like caricatures – which especially bothered me having lived in Germany and known many Germans who didn’t fit into the stereotypes that von Ditfurth was advancing.
This is supposed to be the first book in a series featuring the main character, but I will definitely not be reading any more.
