This is part of the Pratchett Project.
The blurb:
According to the writer of the best-selling crime novel ever to have been published in the city of Ankh-Morpork, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse.
And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder.
He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment.
They say that in the end all sins are forgiven.
But not quite all...
Reading this one broke my heart a little, I think. I've loved the Watch series of novels; as I said earlier, Night Watch is my favourite Pratchett so far, with Thud! a very close second. But Snuff is different from other Watch books. I don't read other reviews before I start a Pratchett book, I want to make up my own mind. So the changes, especially in the latter half of it, were a surprise, and I can see why a lot of other readers peg this one as the book where Pratchett's dementia really starts to become evident. And it's such a loss to the world — he was an genius writer, and it's gutting to know that this is the last Vimes/Watch adventure (except that they will show up in other books, but it's not quite the same).
The change is partly to Vimes, and partly to writing style overall. Vimes is still Vimes — but he's a little more wordy, offering speeches in long paragraphs instead of his usually pretty economical communication. And this is a Vimes novel more than a Watch-as-a-whole novel, too. Nobbs, Colon, Carrot and Angua do show up, but they're bit players this time around; it's not as much an ensemble cast as usual. It's felt like that's been a trend, but it was really pronounced here. Overall, the writing and plotting overall is just not as tight and brisk as usual; there's some repetition and meandering, especially around the Vimes/Willikins dialogues that felt really out of character for Pratchett.
The end in particular felt oddly sentimental. I don't know when in the process of writing novels Pratchett was diagnosed, but the end of this one felt like he was giving Vimes an ending as a character — a happily-ever-after scene as he goes off on holiday and gets what could become quite a hobby in riverboat piloting. It's something he'll be able to retire to, you know? And past Vimes would never have considered retirement, so this felt like Pratchett saying his final goodbye to a loved friend, and letting the reader see it.
::sniffle::
The plot carries on with one of the themes for the Watch series — inclusion. Vimes, the reluctant employer of dwarf, troll, w...erewolf and vampire, goes all in on goblin rights because everyone deserves justice. He doesn't need to like them, he just needs to bring the murderer of a goblin girl to justice. The fact that the local goblin population has been subjected to atrocities before now is brought to light; not just the perpetrators but the enablers are brought to book.
Somewhere out there in the multiverse, there's a Terry Pratchett who wasn't afflicted with the embuggerance, and he wrote a cleaner version of this story, without the wandering and dilution. I hope readers in that dimension treasure it.
Started: 29 April 2025
Finished: 5 May 2025
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