Ugh, this is going to be one of those reviews where I just flounder for things to say because a) I waited too long to write it, and b) I can’t really sum up my feelings into precise words. The short of it: I really, really, really liked this book. I still don’t quite LOVE it, but I’m allllmost there. A couple more books should do the trick. (In fact, I did like it better than The Cuckoo’s Calling, although at certain points it was much […]
Gothic crime and Victorian intrigue
A Victorian novel in the form of an epistolary, this is the supposed journal of 17-year-old Richard Shenstone, who has just been sent home, or “rusticated,” from Cambridge because of misdeeds that are only slowly revealed in the course of the novel. Richard has recently learned that his father, once a respected deacon of the church, has died of a heart attack while under suspicion of embezzlement of church funds–and worse–and that his mother and older sister are living in dire circumstances in a delapidated […]
The circle of life
The first page of this book contains a family tree and upon seeing it my heart sank. I am not one for books that are so complex that they require external charts and diagrams to keep track of everything. But when I started reading I forgave the book completely. The main protagonist is not a person as much as it is a family and the town they establish; the town is completely isolated and in a sense so is the family. All the characters in […]
London calling to the underworld
Ben Aaronovitch’s Moon Over Soho was the first book I ever reviewed for Cannonball Read (CBR 4, 2012), and I loved it – it was dark, fresh, funny and deep. Broken Homes pales in comparison–both the light and shadow of Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho have faded, and things seem to be deliberately slowed down rather than allowed to proceed at their natural pace. When the book opens, Peter Grant, Nightingale and Leslie are still on the trail of the Faceless man, London […]
The Last Word by Lisa Lutz
So I’m guessing that this was originally going to be the final Spellman book since its first title was The Last Word. The edition I read, however, had been re-titled The Next Generation, and since the last chapter was written by Rae, not Izzy, I’m assuming that the series will be having a major change come the next book. That makes sense. Izzy has kind of run her course, and putting her in charge of the agency, while fun for the purposes of the book, did not […]
Trail of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
This is one of the more twisty, harder to guess Spellman books. Izzy’s family has gone nuts on her: Mom is participating in every extracurricular activity known to man, Dad is hiding something, David and Rae are fighting over something but Izzy can’t figure out what. While she’s investigating her family, she’s also got real cases going on. The main one involves her spying on a husband on behalf of his wife, but then also spying on the wife on behalf of her brother. As usual, […]
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