Ishmael Jones travels to the Scottish Highlands on a mysterious dual mission in this intriguing, genre-blending mystery.
The Organisation has despatched Ishmael and his partner Penny to Coronach House on the shores of Loch Ness where the secretive but highly influential Baphamet Group are holding their annual meeting. The Organisation believes an imposter has infiltrated the Group and they have instructed Ishmael to root him or her out. It s not Ishmael s only mission. The first agent sent by the Organisation has been found dead in her room, murdered in a horribly gruesome manner. Ishmael must also discover who killed his fellow agent, Jennifer Rifkin and why.
Dismissive of rumours that the legendary Coronach Creature is behind Jennifer s death, Ishmael sets out to expose the human killer in their midst. But he must act fast before any more Very Important People are killed.”
Very Important Corpses by Simon R. Green. Book # 3 in the Ishmael Jones Mystery series. Narrated by Gildart Jackson. Audiobook by Tantor Media, Inc., Febuary 2019. 8 hours and 11 mins.
After the disappointment of book 2 in the series, I was a little bit leery going in to this book. I was afraid that this would be another book that was just a cut and paste of the first book. D: While there were some repeated moments in Very Important Corpses, for the most part it was a much better book then the last one. Yay! Kinda redemption??
I’ll start with the problems I had. The “witty” banter between Penny and Ishmael is uber repetitious! They literally say the same things as they have in the other books. Word for word. How many times do we have to hear this:
Penny: “You really don’t trust anyone, do you?”
Ishmael: ” No, I don’t. ……. Except for you.”
Penny: ” Nice save, darling.”
AGH!! Please. Stop it. At least change up the way they say it! It doesn’t have to be the exact. Same. Thing. Each. Time. -.-; This kind of crap happens a lot with this series! It leaves me cringing and feeling like the author is just lazily cut and pasting things from a spread sheet or something. I don’t know much about writing, but I feel like there really shouldn’t be this many repeated phrases / conversations between all the books. 
This isn’t the only type of repetitious thing going on in this book. Ishmael calls Penny Spy Girl, and Penny calls him Space boy. When they use those pet names, it’s almost the exact same situation as the last time they used them, so it almost feels like the exact same conversation! There is so much deja vu going on, not only in this book, but this whole series… and it’s only book 3!!! >.<* This shit shouldn’t be happening until at least book 8!!
*Sigh* Aside from the repetition, this book has a decent murder mystery. The killers were a little bit obvious towards the end, but over all it was a satisfying mystery. I was just happy that there was a supernatural element involved again. That was pretty fun and it kept anything from being obvious right off the bat.
As I’ve said numerous times already, this is a book 3 in the series. I still can’t exactly decide how much I like the main character, Ishmael Jones. He’s kind of a dick… but, in a cheeky way…. so…. I don’t know. Sometimes it seems like he just wants to be a thorn in someone’s side just because. It just makes him look like a jerk though. It was cool getting to see the REAL Ishmael come out to play for a little bit at the end. He has been hiding the real him so far, and it was nice to see what he could really do.
Very Important Corpses was an entertaining story that I mostly had fun listening to. It was narrated by Gildart Jackson. It took me a little bit to warm up to Gildart at first. Sometimes the characters sound a little bit too much the same. His performance was alright though. Not the best I’ve ever heard, but not terrible either. By the end of the book his narration had grown on me and I didn’t mind it so much anymore.
Creature From The Book Lagoon 