Review by Booklist Review
The sequel to The Mangle Street Murders (2014) brings back the dysfunctional team of Sidney Grice, London's foremost consulting detective, and his ward, the orphaned March Middleton. The frame is that March Middleton writes her memoirs about the pair's former cases as she braves out the London Blitz. The time she writes about is 1882; a nifty detail is Grice's repeated refusals to bail the Prince of Wales out of his many romantic escapades. Grice is very much (maybe too much) like Sherlock Holmes. March Middleton seems like a Katharine Hepburn character caught in aspic. Their second case involves a group called the Last Death Club, in which the last person to die gets all the other members' investments. One of the club's members consults Grice because he believes that murder is afoot, and dies of prussic-acid poisoning right on Grice's prized parlor carpet. Grice and Middleton investigate his death, and his suspicion about the club, leading to the Dickensian ruined mansion and the Baroness Foskett. Very fast action, often comic, but the unpleasant relationship between Grice and Middleton can be annoying.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Kasasian deepens the mystery of the relationship between his decidedly non-Holmes and Watson duo in his superior second whodunit set in late Victorian London. Since the brilliant and eccentric Sidney Grice, who bills himself as a personal detective, made a professional misstep in the previous entry, 2014's The Mangle Street Murders, he and his ward, the prepossessing March Middleton, must now contend with a light caseload. The doldrums end when Grice is approached by Horatio Green, who wants him to investigate the death of a member of "a final death society," a group of people, usually male, who have no heirs, or heirs they like, and leave their estates to the society's last surviving member. The trail leads Grice and Middleton to a Miss Havisham-like figure, Lady Parthena Foskett, the sole survivor of a family rumored to be the subject of a curse. Kasasian again successfully blends the gruesome and the humorous. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In his second adventure (after The Mangle Street Murders), private detective Sidney Grice, depressed by his last case, perks up when a visitor dies in his study; finally he and his ward, March Middleton, have a new mystery to solve that will draw them to an eerie house in Kew and the enigmatic Baroness Foskett. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Members of a death club each hoping to be the last one standing meet gruesome ends, and only Sidney Grice and his ward can stop the slaughter.Sidney Grice is in a funk, and so is his career as a personal detective thanks to bad press about his last case. His young ward, March Middleton, is concerned even though she has no great affection for her arrogant, humorless, one-eyed guardian. He constantly belittles her and ignores her well-grounded retaliation, and he's no more polite to a potential client. Horatio Green, one of seven members of the Last Death Club, reports that barely a week after the group's formation, one of its cohort is dead. The last surviving member will inherit 70,000, plus accrued interest, and Green proposes that Grice will get 7,000 if he investigates the death of each member as it occurs, to be sure there's no foul play. Grice doesn't have to wait long to get to work: Green dies of prussic acid poisoning at the detective's feet. Frustrated by an indifferent inspector, Grice and March investigate Green's dental surgeon, who almost immediately dies. Visits to the taxidermy studio of the first victim, the homes of the reclusive Baroness Foskett and the other club members, including the improbably named Prometheus Perseus Piggety, are the next steps in a maze of greed, cruelty and vengeance. Grice, with his oozing eye socket, and March, with her love of cigarettes, gin flasks and occasional bets, are hardly the typical crime-solving duo. All they seem to share is their sadness about lost lovesand the flicker of hope for happiness with new partners doesn't do much to offset the horrors of their investigation. Kasasian's sequel is as witty and imaginative as his debut (The Mangle Street Murders, 2014), if you like your humor dark and your delights grotesque. Animal lovers may not be the only readers taking refuge in Beatrix Potter if they make it past the first few chapters. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
