Item - Death in the Dorm

This book is very hard to find, especially at a reasonable price. The good news for people searching for it is... it's not that great.

The actual setup is pretty good, bringing the possibility of some suspenseful action, solving a murder - stuff that has been done elsewhere in the series. Setting it at a fancy prep school is a nice idea, giving the opportunity for some isolation.

But the story is surprisingly thin. There are only ten endings, and none of them feel satisfying. There is solid consistency across the paths though, which is always nice.

The writing isn't too bad, although it spends a lot of time at the beginning explaining what sort of private school this is, how things work, etc. Not terribly engaging until things kick off. There's an amount of text devoted to computers and email, which looks to be dated even for the year it was released (1996).

Still, not very exciting for the title or premise.

More reviews by Jordashebasics

This gritty, somewhat scary book reminds me a lot of Tattoo Of Death, an earlier work by R. A. Montgomery, but it's not as good. Here, the characters are a bit too exaggerated and one-dimensional. Your roommate Pat (yes, he actually appears in the story -- the body hanging from the ceiling was fake -- sorry I spoiled it for you...) is unrealistically annoying, having just about all the bad attributes anyone could think of. Mean, messy, arrogant, nosy, you name it. Most of the other characters in here are stereotypes as well, and none of the situations in here are particularly original either. This book isn't bad, but it's only average, and doesn't stand out as much as its predecessor. Still, it's way better than Montgomery's early work, and it's obvious that he's finally found his true style by this point.

More reviews by stonemason