Thursday, 5 March 2026

Review: The Complete Mrs Pargeter Crime Mysteries 1–8

The Complete Mrs Pargeter Crime Mysteries 1–8 The Complete Mrs Pargeter Crime Mysteries 1–8 by Simon Brett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an updating of the Golden Age mystery for the late, rather than early, 20th century (and into the 21st). The first book was published in 1986, and the rest intermittently through to almost the present day, but there's considerable time distortion which means that the events proceed, and the characters age, much more slowly than technology advances.

I thought I vaguely remembered a TV version of it, but apparently I was mistaken. Simon Brett, the author, is a BBC radio producer, who has produced several shows I've listened to, and that may have been where I got that idea.

Overall, I enjoyed the books, despite the unlikeliness and the spoiled protagonist. "Spoiled protagonist" is a technical term I use for protagonists who are narrated as too perfect and are constantly handed everything they need, whenever they need it, sometimes at the expense of lesser characters. At least in this book the spoiling has an explanation: Mrs Pargeter is the widow of a criminal mastermind who was highly respected by his extensive network of specialists, many of whom he specifically instructed to look after her after his death. Still, not only is Mrs P. very comfortable with herself, but the narration shares her admiration of her own perfections, and judges the lesser people around her unmercifully while never casting even a fragment of shade on Mrs P. Also, the author has his hand on the scales in her favour more than once, including giving her devices that apparently work by magic.

The following reviews of the individual books were mostly written immediately after reading them and before going on to the next book.

Book 1, A Nice Class of Corpse, is set in a private hotel inhabited by a number of elderly people. Mrs Pargeter, aged 67 and five years widowed, joins them, and then (by the kind of coincidence that cosy mystery abounds with) the murders start. The late and genuinely lamented Mr Pargeter, it's clearly implied but never outright stated, made considerable money in illegal enterprises, and his widow calls on the expert advice of a couple of his old associates to help her in solving the crimes.

Mrs Pargeter is self-assertive to a carefully calculated degree, never pushy or rude, just good at cheerfully getting her own way and ignoring social convention if it happens not to suit her. I enjoyed her encounters with the uptight hotel proprietor immensely.

I spotted the first red herring - it seemed far too obvious far too early on - but the second red herring fooled me completely, in a way I enjoyed and applauded. The murderer keeps a diary, and we get extracts from the diary interspersed with the narrative, which ramps up the tension. A very slight cheat: The style of the diary is neutral and generic, so it gives no hints in that way to the identity of the murderer, even though most of the suspects have their own style of speaking to some degree. I can explain it away as the difference between spoken and written language, or the difference between an outward persona and the true thoughts of the person.

At the end of the book, Mrs Pargeter decides this isn't the place she wants to live, and moves on.

Four stars.

In book 2, Mrs, Presumed Dead, we start to get a sense of the formula. As is usually the case in cozy mysteries, another murder happens to occur in Mrs Pargeter's vicinity, this time in the house she buys in a yuppie enclave - before she even moves into it. A key clue happens to have got stuck down behind the radiator, and she happens to find it because a piece of paper she's written something on also falls down into the same place.

We get further instances of Mrs Pargeter calling on her late husband's underworld contacts. His address book is essentially Felix the Cat's bag of tricks: it can produce any expertise she requires at the time. The criminals, most of whom have now gone straight, never fail to say that they'll always be grateful to Mr Pargeter, and that he told them before he died to look after her if she ever needed anything.

Through all of this, she gets a pretty good outline of the motive for the murder, and is reasonably sure that one has been committed. She uses one of her husband's contacts to confirm this (not a spoiler, because the first scene we get in the book is right after the murder has been committed, from the deliberately shadowy POV of the murderer), and reluctantly and anonymously tips off the police. Their investigation somehow fails to turn up the fact that she's already been everywhere they're looking. We don't get names or even much description of the investigating officers, and we certainly don't get their point of view; they're a means to an end, and Mrs Pargeter puppets them remotely.

The small group of six executive houses in commuting distance to London is a hotbed of dirty secrets, meaning everyone has a motive for the murder. This is pretty much in line with the Golden Age detective playbook. The specifics of the small-minded characters and their secrets have changed in 50 or 60 years, but the general feel is similar.

Once again, as in the first book, Mrs Pargeter is herself in danger from the murderer before the book ends, and then decides that this isn't the place she wants to live, and prepares to move on.

I make it sound like I didn't enjoy it, but I did. It is clearly settling into a formula, though, and I'm not sure I'll continue to love the formula through eight books unless it gets changed up a bit.

Still four stars, but the last one is a bit smaller.

Book 3, Mrs Pargeter's Package, is set mostly in Greece, where Mrs P has gone on holiday with a recently widowed friend whose late husband did... something vague and possibly suspicious, not that Mrs P can fault her for that. Of course there's a murder ((view spoiler)), and of course Mrs P investigates, and of course she receives abundant help from several people with special talents who recite the now familiar liturgy about what a great man her late husband was, how he helped the person immensely, and how he told them to look after his widow when he was gone, and of course anything she needs will be at no charge.

This time, when Mrs P is in danger at the end, she's saved by an almost literal deus ex machina, which conveniently dispenses justice at the same time, meaning she doesn't need to involve the police at all. (There is a policeman involved, but he's covering up the murder, not trying to solve it.)

There's a red herring which stretched my suspension of disbelief considerably. Don't click on the spoiler unless you really want a spoiler. (view spoiler)

The minor characters continue to be caricatures who are looked down upon from the lofty height of the flawless Mrs Pargeter (if you don't count recklessness as a flaw). The narration is all in close third person from her POV, but in a couple of places there's a lot more detail about the doings of these minor characters than a not-particularly-interested observer could plausibly gather from overhearing their conversations.

This one drops to three stars. If the fourth book isn't better, I'm out.

Book 4, Mrs Pargeter's Pound of Flesh: OK, it's improved somewhat. To support another friend whose husband is inside (except when he slips out to visit her, with no apparent difficulty), Mrs P joins the friend in a country manor converted into a slimming spa. There's some pretty fierce satire on the slimming industry and the way it depends on making women feel bad about their bodies; Mrs P is notable for feeling good about her (generously proportioned) body, so it doesn't affect her, but it messes up her friend. Meanwhile, there's something dodgy going on which involves the suspected murder of an innocent Cambridge University student, the definite murder of a staff member at the spa, and apparently unfinished business from Mr Pargeter's past. I saw two of the "twists" coming half a mile off, but there is some suspense (Mrs P gets into danger again, though in a way that's somewhat comedic, and is rescued by someone who shouldn't have known where she was), and by conveniently forgetting about the potential consequences for one of her friends that have prevented justice being done earlier, justice is done.

It's still a bit hinky, but the three stars are edging towards a fourth this time, and I'm happy to carry on.

Book 5, Mrs Pargeter's Plot: The builder Mrs P is employing to build her dream home, who is of course one of her late husband's many associates, is stitched up for a murder he didn't commit, and Mrs P needs to find the real culprit in order to get him back on the job (and back to his wife, who has heavily lacquered copper hair and exquisitely bad taste in interior decorating, but doesn't deserve to have her husband in jail for something he didn't do). Complicating the situation is another ex-con who has had a kind of conversion experience while inside, and is now trying to make restitution to people he had previously wronged - but because he's extremely thick and has an odd angle on life, and is also trying to prove that he's developed a sense of humour (he hasn't), the unlikely ways in which he does this (using who knows what resources) cause more problems for the recipients of his misguided "help". It's a good source of humour; he may not be able to tell a joke competently, but he is himself a good joke, as long as you're not the one he's gifting with something wildly inappropriate and the opposite of helpful.

The humour takes it back up to four stars, and this time it doesn't take shortcuts to get through its plot.

Book 6, Mrs Pargeter's Point of Honour: For the first time in the series, Mrs P is living in the same situation as in the previous book, in a fancy hotel in London owned by another of her husband's many grateful former proteges. Instead of solving a murder, this time she's paying off a debt of honour, a promise her husband made to the widow of another of his crew. She has to return a bunch of stolen paintings to the people and institutions they were stolen from, without bringing the name of the deceased thief into disrepute. By the end of the book, there's also an element of revenge against some people who deserve punishment, not just for things they did but for things they planned to do.

There are clues in this one (from the technology references) that the timeline is slipping around. The first book was published in 1986, and implicitly took place then. At that point, Mr P had been dead about 5 years, if I remember correctly. This one was published in 1998, and Mr P has still been dead about 5 years, so only about a year at most has passed, but the technology referenced as having been used when he was alive is the technology of five years before 1998, not five years before 1986.

It continues to be highly unlikely and full of colourful characters, which is fun. There's an incompetent police inspector who is brilliantly portrayed. It feels a lot more like a heist (or reverse heist, in some respects), and I enjoy heists, so this one gets an easy four stars.

The timeline really becomes unanchored in Book 7, Mrs Pargeter's Principle. It was published in 2015, and again the technology references clearly tell us that we're in 2015. Several years have passed - Mrs P is now finally living in the house that was being slowly built in Mrs Pargeter's Plot, and has been for a little while, and Mr P has now been dead for "some years". But she's certainly not 29 years older than she was in the book published in 1986, which would make her 95; her age isn't specified, but it doesn't seem to be more than early 70s at the most.

Again, we're not solving a murder, but tidying up some unfinished business of Mr Pargeter's, some of it out of duty (looking after the daughter of a recently deceased former employee who'd deliberately dropped off the radar), some more out of curiosity (why, when Mrs P attends the funeral of someone whose name was in her husband's contact book but who none of his old colleagues seem to remember, is she warned off with threats from talking to the widow?) There are a couple of twists, but the main one is pretty obvious, and only by carrying the idiot ball do Mrs P's crew not tumble to it much earlier. Technology plays a significant role, including a completely implausible invention that causes zips (any zip, no preparation required, and no mechanism of any kind suggested) to drop when a remote control is pointed at them and activated. Also, there are magic numbers which, when entered into alarm systems or computers, bypass the need to know a password. Despite the many highly implausible elements and the obvious twist, it's a fun ride. Four stars, though the fourth one is maybe a bit small.

Book 8, Mrs Pargeter's Public Relations, is completely ridiculous and highly predictable, and receives three stars without the option of a fine. We also get more lazy, villainous Greek people, as in Book 2. There's another magic remote control, this one capable of opening (and subsequently closing) any padlock, regardless of whether it's a combination lock, an electronic lock, or an ordinary key lock, and once again there's no hint of how it works (because it breaks several laws of physics and the basic way that mechanisms work). Likewise with the magic software that Mrs P's hacker friend develops, which can somehow delete offline backups as well as the files on the computers she's actually hacked into. Both of these are well beyond implausible.

And, of course, once she has a magic padlock opener, every lock Mrs P encounters that she needs to get through is suddenly a padlock. The author tilts the playing field thoroughly to her advantage throughout, even when it's unnecessary, such as when by "serendipity" (authorial fiat) someone she was about to call calls her and spares her the slight trouble.

Mrs P is in danger twice. (view spoiler)

I saw the "twists" (including the second rescue) all coming a mile off, and correctly predicted well in advance of the revelations not only what crime was being committed but exactly what they were (view spoiler)

The series continues with two further books. My library has them, and I might read them at some point, even though so many of the books feature ridiculous plot devices, the "twists" are often patently obvious and the main character is overly perfect and given far too much authorial help. The average is a very low four or quite a high three stars; if the writing mechanics weren't so good I would be harsher.

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Sunday, 1 March 2026

Review: Three Sevens: A Detective Story

Three Sevens: A Detective Story Three Sevens: A Detective Story by Perley Poore Sheehan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book sets out to be serious and profound. Because it fails so badly at being profound, it's also just absurd enough that the serious part doesn't quite come off either. Despite the subtitle, it's really not a detective story except by an extremely generous definition that involves almost no on-screen detective work, by someone who is almost as far as it's possible to be from being any kind of official detective. (I picked it up out of the Project Gutenberg new books feed, even though I knew nothing about the author and there was almost no information, and no reviews, on Goodreads, because it said it was a detective story and I was prepared to give it a chance.)

It is an original premise, at least. The title doesn't, as I suspected, refer to a hand of cards, but to the prison number of the protagonist, 3777, real name Daniel Craig (no, not that one). He has allowed himself to be imprisoned under another name for a crime he didn't commit, because he felt sorry for the young man who did commit it and sympathetic to his reason, and also because he was in some despair after being expelled from college because of a moment of poor judgement. The book opens with him unjustly in solitary confinement because of a vengeful prison guard who he had annoyed in some way I've forgotten, probably by standing up to his injustice.

He receives (via trained cat) a smuggled saw, originally intended for the previous inhabitant of his cell, who has died. He saws his way out and masterminds a prison takeover, but what he didn't realize was that on that same day, the corrupt and cruel prison governor was being replaced by a reformer, who would have fixed up the issues that are driving his revolt. The new governor's daughter arrives in advance of her father, and is caught up in a riot that breaks out among the newly freed prisoners. Craig's intention is to let out the people he believes to be innocent, or who he thinks have served a long enough sentence and are harmless, and keep the bad ones, but this doesn't go as he'd hoped, and several dangerous criminals get loose. Meanwhile, he saves the young woman (she's about 18, but very competent and brave), and of course they fall for each other. They meet a total of four times in the course of the book, mostly briefly, but this constitutes a romance for purposes of subplot and Craig's inspiration, hence my "thin-romance" tag.

Craig himself goes on the lam, with a red notebook filled with details of the escaped convicts he swears to bring back, since it's his fault they're on the loose. He has a number of adventures in doing so, many of them pretty unlikely, especially the ones near the end, where he gets high-level assistance in the climactic capture of the last few crooks. Along the way, the narrator makes various generalizations about black people, Americans, men, and women, mostly complimentary, but generalizations nonetheless. There's a good twist at the end that ties a few things together, and although it's reliant on coincidence, I think the author pulls it off.

At its best, it's suspenseful and action-packed. At its worst, it's just silly, and there's more of that than there is of the good stuff. But there is some good stuff, and the premise is (as far as I know) original; there are worse century-old books you could be reading.

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Friday, 27 February 2026

Review: The Case of the Gilded Fly

The Case of the Gilded Fly The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

This is what you get when a young man who has had more education than is good for him, and is smug about it, writes a book. "Edmund Crispin" is a pseudonym, but it perfectly conveys the exact kind of Englishman the author is. It's set in Oxford in the 1940s, which is where the author was studying at the time he wrote it, so he's following "write what you know" even if he sometimes does less well with "show, don't tell".

Very few of the numerous characters (all introduced in a lump, so it's hard to remember who is who) are at all admirable, definitely including the detective, and none of them are happy even before the murders start. This is articulated at some length and with considerable obscure literary reference, most of which failed to land for me because I don't have the exact education the author had. The detective blithely excuses some genuinely awful chosen behaviour, including what we would today call human trafficking, in other characters, while fiercely judging other people for simple human failings they can't help.

The point of view is omniscient, but mostly follows Nigel, a journalist who never seems to do any journalism. He is Watson to the detective's Sherlock, if Watson didn't like or respect Sherlock and found his eccentricities frustrating and overdone. He has a far-too-fast romance with one of the numerous secondary characters/suspects.

I kept reading mostly because I wanted to know how the crime had been done, and it turned out to be contrived and unlikely, as I'd feared. It was both carefully prepared for and also took advantage of a spontaneous situation that couldn't have been predicted, and then the murderer overcomplicated it.

"Overcomplicated" is a good description of the book as a whole. The style is baroque, which isn't to my taste, and that and the annoying characters (and narrator) and the rigged ending bring it down to three stars for me. The craft is not bad for a first novel, it's well edited apart from a couple of dangling modifiers, and it was popular both at the time of publication and since, but it wasn't a good fit for me, and I won't be reading more in the series.

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Sunday, 22 February 2026

Review: Dragons, Heists and Other Retirement Plans

Dragons, Heists and Other Retirement Plans Dragons, Heists and Other Retirement Plans by Meg Pennerson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I went into this with high expectations - I love heists, generally enjoy dragons, and am reaching a stage of life where retirement plans are also of interest - but I was prepared to be disappointed, and unfortunately I was, somewhat. It isn't bad, but I felt it was lacking in a couple of ways.

A common complaint made against cozy fantasy is that it's boring. Now, I usually don't find it so - stakes don't have to be high and things don't have to be happening every second for me to enjoy a book. Actually, plenty happens (in a plot sense) in this one, but I never felt much of a sense of urgency or tension or suspense or even importance of the stakes until near the end. It meandered from one thing to the next, without the protagonists ever seeming to be in much danger or even to be strongly motivated. I'm not sure why this was; all of the elements were there. There was even a ticking clock after a while, something that had to be done within four days, but it still didn't feel as urgent as it should have. Perhaps it's something in the way the author conveys, or doesn't convey, the inner lives of the characters. The characters themselves, even though they had backstories and interests that should have made them more than just their archetype plus their plot role, still didn't feel to me like they had much depth, and it was probably for the same reason. I seldom got a sense of them feeling anything strongly, even when that's what was being described in narrative; it felt like I was being told it but not shown it.

Even when another, shorter ticking clock was introduced, I didn't find it plausible - it was one of those cinematic cliches where there's a very specific deadline after an exact amount of time for a phenomenon that will harm multiple people, even though if you think about it even for a second, the phenomenon concerned is something that will affect different people differently, and will affect all of them gradually. It's not a binary state of "after this exact second, everything will be irretrievably bad, but before that exact second, if we stop the phenomenon everyone will be perfectly fine almost immediately," but that's how it's represented.

But the book did have some original aspects, and wasn't just a rehearsal of standard tropes (despite occasionally making use of one). The protagonists are close female friends who, forty years before, at which time they were in their 30s, were a famous duo of criminals. That's where the heist comes in, though part of my disappointment was that we didn't really get to see the heist. We saw the heist fail, in a flashback right at the beginning, and we were told later on about how intricate it had been to set up, but that was it.

Largely because the heist failed - through the cheeky and crude intervention of another thief - the pair retired, one to keep magical cats and the other to get married to a solid, decent man and raise a son. She's now widowed. The story is about them coming out of retirement to clean up the continuing mess that their failure 40 years before led to, in the course of which they re-encounter their old rival and discover that he was a dupe of an unscrupulous businessman, and is now a rather pathetic old man.

I did appreciate the avoidance of one common trope. (view spoiler) Other people probably won't like it for much the same reasons that I do.

I also enjoyed the fact that the cats (and dragons) can talk to each other, but their humans don't understand them, even though they understand the humans. It provides a second set of viewpoints in the scenes, and most of the humour.

There's a subplot, which comes up near the beginning and at the end but not in between, about someone who is raising property taxes and driving older people out of their homes when they can't pay. (The word "foreclosure" is used, which isn't quite right; that's when you can't pay a mortgage. When you can't pay taxes, that's seizure.) I assume that's setup for the next book, since it isn't fully resolved or even given much attention in this one.

I wasn't engaged enough, though, to definitely want to continue with the series. It has potential and originality, but something in the style didn't quite connect for me. I increasingly make the distinction these days between sound craft and human appeal. The best books have both; a lot of books I read have human appeal, or, put another way, an engaging story, but fail to back it up with sound craft. This one has decent craft and some good ideas, but as a story it didn't reach me.

I received a copy via Netgalley for review, which may not be exactly the final version.

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Thursday, 19 February 2026

Review: The Hermit Of Turkey Hollow: The Story Of An Alibi, Being An Exploit Of Ephraim Tutt, Attorney & Counselor At Law

The Hermit Of Turkey Hollow: The Story Of An Alibi, Being An Exploit Of Ephraim Tutt, Attorney & Counselor At Law The Hermit Of Turkey Hollow: The Story Of An Alibi, Being An Exploit Of Ephraim Tutt, Attorney & Counselor At Law by Arthur Cheney Train
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A wandering, sprawling and often amusing recounting of a trial for murder.

For the prosecution, the recently-appointed county prosecutor. What nobody knows is that in order to afford the bribe that got him the job, he has embezzled the trust fund that assists in the support of the accused, a harmless indigent known as Skinny the Tramp. He then had to borrow the money that was due to Skinny as his six-monthly interest payment.

For the defense, Ephraim Tutt, a series character of the author's. He's motivated by a love for justice and a belief that his client is innocent. He's been called in by the town lodge, of which Skinny was once a member; they also believe that he's innocent, even though the sheriff, who's the head of the lodge, is a key witness for the prosecution.

Central to the case are two facts. There are eight witnesses who swear Skinny was in the town three miles away at 4pm; and the lumberjack who found the victim, the hermit of the title, breathing his last noted that the hermit's clock was showing 4pm when he expired. A perfect alibi - if the clock was running at the time, and on this point the defense hinges.

There's an uncomfortable night-time expedition over bad roads in an unreliable car (this is 1920) to check this point with the lumberjack, who's left town for another job. This trip turns out to be for nothing; he can't be located.

There are some suspenseful courtroom moments, and some good reading of his opponent by Tutt. Overall, though, it's not a tight plot, and the prose is sometimes verbose (as you'd expect from a lawyer). There's some casual racism towards Roma people and black people, and a good deal of contempt directed at the "hicks" in the small town. It was entertaining in its way, but not outstanding, and from me it gets three stars.

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Wednesday, 18 February 2026

Review: Twig's Traveling Tomes

Twig's Traveling Tomes Twig's Traveling Tomes by Gryffin Murphy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one reads as if it was consciously crafted to appeal to the Platonic ideal of the cozy fiction fan, and indeed it is being published because it drew the attention of the "tastemaker" who discovered Travis Baldree. My cozy fantasy bingo card filled up quickly: tea, love of books, small business, gender and relationship diversity in all the usual ways (except that nobody is clearly trans), broadly D&D-style setting, quirky introvert protagonist being pushed out of her comfort zone by events, supportive love interest, cute familiar (though not until halfway through).

For me, contrarian that I am, this was almost a downside. It's not all the way to "made from box mix," but it does fall into my category of "if you like this sort of thing, this is definitely one." I personally prefer fresher ideas rather than variations on an established theme, but I know I'm in a minority there, and lots of people will love this unreservedly.

The worldbuilding, while not startlingly original, has had a bit more work than is often the case with cozy. Four kingdoms themed around the traditional four elements, elemental and natural magic, approximately the usual D&D species, though elves have brightly coloured skin and gnomes brightly coloured hair.

The editing is also a bit above average; there are several of the usual issues (occasional missing past perfect tense, "may" in past tense narration instead of "might," dialog sometimes punctuated incorrectly), but fewer examples than I usually see. The biggest problem is the vocabulary. The author uses a number of words that don't have quite the right connotation (the most obvious example being "amorously" for "lovingly" when it isn't sexual love), and a couple that sound similar to the word she means but are a different word, like "hurdling" for "hurtling" and "clamored" for "clambered". Both of those are relatively common confusions, and there may yet be more editing before publication; I had a pre-publication version via Netgalley for review.

The romance begins with instant attraction, then there's a long will-they-won't-they period (about three-quarters of the book) with minimal justification given. There's some very steamy kissing and some innuendo, but nothing more than that on screen.

There's nothing so badly wrong with it that I feel justified in dropping it to three stars, but I'm giving it four a bit grudgingly. Put that down to my curmudgeonly nature and dislike of the expected choice.

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Monday, 16 February 2026

Review: Look to the Lady

Look to the Lady Look to the Lady by Margery Allingham
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Kicks off with a great burst of fascinating, suspenseful, apparently inexplicable events, explains them, and continues that cycle until the end.

There's a wonderful contrast between Campion's persona of an upper-class twit who doesn't even quote classic literature (like Wodehouse's characters), but the cliches of the advertising industry, and his actual keen intelligence and wonderful ability to organize surprising events. This is assisted by his wide circle of lowlife contacts, so not only does he have a mask over his real personality, but he lives two distinct lives in different spheres (using a number of different pseudonyms, of which "Albert Campion" is one; his real first name, apparently, is Rudolph, and his surname a famous one from an old aristocratic house).

Like the previous book in the series, this one takes place around a very ancient country manor in a remote rural district of England. This one, though, protects an ancient chalice on behalf of the Crown, using a combination of subterfuge and what appears to be a supernatural guardian.

The action blasts along, with real danger at plenty of suspenseful moments, the characters are varied and amusing, and the title is a big hint at the villain. It's like an Edgar Wallace, but more clever, and I'm a big fan of Wallace even with his pulpy limitations. I'm looking forward to more in this fortunately long series.

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