How Lucky: Hoping For More Than I Got

I rarely read a selection of the mystery readers group that I used to attend in person.  They have three selections every month and I'm usually not interested in any of them.  This time I decided to read one of the selections for the February Zoom meeting.  It's a contemporary mystery called How Lucky by Will Leitch that has been compared to the Alfred Hitchcock movie, Rear Window, because both have a protagonist who is in a wheelchair.  I have never seen Rear Window and wasn't aware of the similarity until I read the reviews.  This review will center on the observations that came to mind as I was reading this book.

                                  

This isn't a murder mystery, but it is a crime novel.  Daniel, the wheelchair bound protagonist, saw a woman get into a car.  Later he discovers that she's missing.  So he wants to find out what happened to her.   

Daniel has a terminal disease.  I'm not sure why the author made this decision.  Since Daniel's death isn't imminent, it isn't relevant to the plot.  I suppose Will Leitch wants readers to be sympathetic toward Daniel even if we don't find him a very likable character.    

Daniel's job is to deal with online complaints from customers of an airline. He likes to respond with emojis.  Daniel thinks that this short circuits hostility.  "How angry can you be at an emoji?"  he comments.  I may be atypical, but  I find the use of emojis as a response in a discussion, annoying.  It makes me feel as if my well reasoned remarks aren't being taken seriously.  If I received an emoji as a response in a business context, I would feel that the company employee was being unprofessional.  So right off the bat, I felt that Daniel had poor judgment.

There is a brief sequence in How Lucky dealing with a game called Azul.  When I looked it up, I discovered that it's played with illustrated tiles.  I enjoyed the illustrations I saw in my search. (See the Wikipedia article here.) Azul was designed by Michael Kiesling, illustrated by Phillipe Guérin  and Chris Quilliam, and released in 2017 by Plan B Games.  I was glad to discover Azul.  It almost justified the time I spent reading this book.

The characters and their interactions didn't impress me. Their lack of maturity was realistic given their age, but I would have preferred more interesting characters.  I was impatient with them.  There were also predictable plot elements.  I was hoping for more originality from this book.