Snuff: (Discworld Novel 39) (Discworld series)

About This Product

This is the countryside, after all. Everyone sees where you go and you never know who is behind a hedge. And if you're very unlucky, the person behind the hedge could have very unfriendly intentions. It may look idyllic, but the countryside isn't all flowers and thatched cottages and bracing walks in your best tweed. Beneath the greenery lies a dark underbelly, and there's something about rambling country houses that attracts dastardly plots and grisly murder. A challenge for any detective, but especially for one bred in the city who doesn't understand the Way Things Are Done. In the countryside, people know their place, and everyone else's place too, especially if it's beneath their own. And they have some rather old fashioned ideas about people who are different from them.

Product Details

Manufacturer

by Terry Pratchett (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

ASIN

B00563M11M

Customer Reviews Summary

Snuff rounds off the Watch series beautifully. There have been some reviews moaning that it’s too wordy. I don’t agree. It does feel as though Pratchett surreptitiously collected all the bits his editor told him to cut from his other Watch series books, because they interrupted the action, and put them in his own Unggue pot ready for this book. The gift is that we get to explore inside Vimes' mind, and get to know Vimes the man, husband and father, while he goes on holiday – away from paperwork, managerial tasks and street crime (although crime finds him, of course). His mind is at more leisure to explore what it means to be a policeman, and how abiding by the law saves him from exacting vengeful justice which would make him no better than a criminal. In this book we see the repercussions of ‘privilege’ for the unprivileged, and Pratchett highlights the usual parallels with our world on Discworld, this time tackling slavery, holocaust, collusion through ignorance, racial prejudice and what makes a sentient being – strong snuff indeed. He doesn’t hold back from depictions of brutality, either. Even Fred Colon has enlightenment forced on him... There are fewer belly laughs than usual (who can forget the wizard-assisted frantic coach journey to Koom Valley in ‘Thud!’ for example?) although there’s plenty of action, some wry humour, and tension aplenty throughout with a murderer on the loose and Young Sam in the picture. One to read at the end of the Watch series (best to read them order, anyway) otherwise many of the references in this book won’t make sense. I couldn’t put it down.