[fantasyfan]

Personally, I feel that Brat Farrar is a failure as a mystery novel. The mystery of why Brat looks so much like Patrick is generally underplayed and resolved in a very contrived way at the end. The other mystery is the death of Patrick but there is little focus on the murder until we are nearly half-way through the book. Then it is apparently dropped until the very end.

As to matters involving the plotting, ethical questions, and class and gender assumptions, I think Issybird has dealt definitively with these. On the plus side, as with others, I found that the writing was excellent. The characters were certainly well-drawn and interesting and I generally mildly enjoyed reading the book as a novel of community and family relationships--but not as a mystery.