Review of All Body Bags and No Knickers

[Arvind Kumar Sinha 21]

[Following is a volunteer review of "All Body Bags and No Knickers" by Shawe Ruckus.]

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3 out of 5 stars

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Shawe Ruckus "All Body Bags and No Knickers" starts with an intriguing premise where a man in Seoul received an envelope in the hospital, filled with notes written by his sister on hospital day to day calendar slips, which were confusing to him. The prologue sets the stage for a thrilling mystery, promising a suspenseful journey just like the book name suggests; however, the book quickly veers off course, spending a significant portion of its length on character development and cultural exploration, at the cost of the central mystery.

The book follows the newlyweds Chance and Catherine as they embark on a journey to China for their honeymoon and to meet Chance's rest of the family. Catherine meets some people on flight and at the airport, and the story somehow involves them. The plot takes a turn when they get to know that there's police in the hotel for a murder investigation, and they try to solve the decades-old mystery involving chance's cousin An and her friends.

While the characters of Chance Yang and Catherine are adorable, and their chemistry is great. I especially liked how Catherine called chance as Mr. Yang; it was cute, and her cat name was Mr. Darcy; that's cute too, but the narrative often gets bogged down in mundane details of their daily lives whose relevance to the plot is questionable. The inclusion of elements like Ghost Day was important to the whole story, but extensive cultural insights into Chinese customs, cuisine, and history, while informative, feel tangential to the main storyline.

The mystery itself, while intriguing, is slow to unfold. The initial mystery, involving the cryptic notes, is largely forgotten for an extended period. I would rate this book 3 out of 5 stars for this reason alone. I did not find any grammatical mistake, but the extended exploration of Chinese culture, through informative, overshadowed the whole suspenseful element of the plot. The connection between the initial cryptic notes received in Seoul and the events unfolding in China was not clearly woven.
All body bags and no Knickers is a bit of a mixed bag for me. The characters, especially Chance and Catherine, are likeable; they were quite sweet together, but it's a slow-burn mystery, so one has to be prepared for a bit of a wait before the real excitement begins.

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All Body Bags and No Knickers
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