Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Readers tackling this intricately plotted, epic-length Victorian mystery need to pay attention. Luckily this third book of the Gower Street Detective series is so eccentrically characterized, oddly appointed with the creatively bizarre, and rich with frightful detail that one can barely look away from the page. Rarely will you meet such disjunctively symbiotic detectives as Sidney Grice and March Middleton. More like the demanding, secretive Cyrus Barker in Will Thomas' Barker and Llewelyn series than the comparatively amiable Sherlock Holmes, Mr. G, as his double-negative-mixing housemaid calls him, defines rudeness, and although his intellect is undoubtedly superior, he exhibits virtually no sympathetic or kindly emotions, relying instead on insult and belittlement. The cigarette- and gin-addicted Middleton, on the other hand, hides her somewhat softer side behind her decidedly plain exterior and peculiarly gruesome curiosity. First one murder occurs (or does it?), then another, then yet another. The violence is maddening literally and March spirals into self-doubt and hallucination, while her guardian (to his shock) repeatedly fails to save her from danger and delusion. This is confusing, dark, and torturously filled with dead ends, disjointed asides, and changes in narrative perspective and it's ultimately just about as entertaining as novel-reading gets. Think Lemony Snicket meets Neil Gaiman for tea in Dracula's castle.--Baker, Jen Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in London in 1883, Kasasian's exceptional third outing for personal (i.e., private) detective Sidney Grice (after 2015's The Curse of the House of Foskett) opens on a somber note, with a preface by Grice explaining that he had to finish the account of their current case written by his ward, March Middleton, because she has been "lost to this world." Then, in a flashback, March reads a letter dated 1882 from a woman warning her to leave Grice's home and suggesting he murdered her mother. While the reader is reeling from the implications of that reveal, a flashback to 1876 recounts the horrific fate of Marjory Gregory, who inexplicably slashed herself to death, but whose husband, who witnessed her end, insisted that she was murdered more than four years earlier. These teasers are but a prelude to a series of bizarre events that result in March apparently hacking to death a newly found relative. The Grand Guignol plot line is leavened with laugh-out-loud passages showcasing both Grice's literalness and disregard for social niceties. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
After her godfather, Sidney Grice, London's greatest detective, travels to Yorkshire for a case (even though he rarely leaves the city), a bored March Middleton is lured to Saturn Villa in Highgate to reunite with a long-lost relative. March is unfamiliar with her family's history and is convinced Ptolemy Hercules Arbuthnot Travers Symth is her great-uncle. When "Uncle Tolly" is murdered, March needs Sidney to uncover the truth and save her from the gallows. VERDICT The third outing in this Victorian series (after The Curse of the House of Foskett) stars a clever, twisty plot and entertaining characters. Not just another Sherlock Holmes pastiche, this series has its own allure that will attract fans of Will Thomas, Alex Grecian, and David Morrell. © Copyright 2016. 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
Victorian detective Sidney Grice takes on a new client: his own young ward. March Middleton believes she has no family. Her mother died at March's birth, and her father was recently murdered. He left March in the care of her godfather, Sidney Grice, who gives her a home but never stops ridiculing her inferior intelligence, her plainness, and her cigarette-sneaking, gin-sipping ways. Even so, March isn't altogether unhappy with Mr. G, and together they've solved some unusual cases. While he's investigating a murder in Yorkshire, she's as pleased as she is surprised by a letter from Ptolemy Travers Smyth, who claims to be her cousin and invites her to dinner at his home, Saturn Villa. As a reference, he offers Inspector George Pound, whose ring March secretly wears next to her heart. But Pound's recovering from a stab wound, and rather than trouble him, March trustingly heads out alone to the villa to meet Smyth, who begs that March call him Uncle Tolly and stay overnight. He also hints that Grice plans to kill her. Before March can find out why, Tolly dies horribly, and March, unaccountably ill and hallucinating badly, isn't sure she didn't kill him. Tolly's valet summons the police, and only the trifling fact that Tolly isn't really dead clears March's nameuntil a series of actual murders puts her in as much peril as her mysteriously altered mental state. Her guardian uses such clues as wax, dust, a woodlouse, a couple of eyelashes, and a pickled puppy's head to link the recent deaths to disturbing events from March's past. But can even Grice's keen intellect and perceptiveness about everything but his own foibles save March from the gallows? Despite occasionally overworked jokes and a disappointingly abrupt ending, Kasasian (The Curse of the House of Foskett, 2015, etc.) surpasses Grice's first two cases with a bizarre, clever, and constantly surprising whodunit. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
