Book Review: MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH BY ARIANA FRANKLIN

Genre:  Historical Fiction
Published by:  Bantam Books  (May 2008)
Pages:  525  (Paperback)

My Rating:  9/10

About the Book:

Adelia Aguilar is a rare thing in medieval Europe – a woman who has trained as a doctor. Her speciality is the study of corpses, a skill that must be concealed if she is to avoid accusations of witchcraft.
But in Cambridge a child has been murdered, others are disappearing, and King Henry has called upon a renowned Italian investigator to find the killer – fast.
What the king gets is Adelia, his very own Mistress of the Art of Death.
The investigation takes Adelia deep into Cambridge; its castle and convents, and streets teeming with life. And it is here that she attracts the attention of a murderer who is prepared to kill again…

In the first of a series of novels featuring Adelia, we are introduced to this woman from Solerno, Italy who has come to England to help find the killer of several children without disclosing the fact that she’s a real doctor.  It wasn’t easy for her but she understood peoples superstitions and was careful not to be regarded as a witch.

Adelia Aguilar is now one of my favourite historical characters, she’s a woman in a man’s world, way ahead of her time, intelligent, witty, independent  and obsessed with the dead and what their bodies tell her.....and she’s not afraid of speaking her mind!

I thought the storyline was compelling …. there was a little romance … some gruesome details describing the childrens deaths and their injuries …... some wonderful warm and quirky characters, especially Gyltha the cook and housekeeper who is a big softy despite her rough exterior …... a few nasty characters …... a good steady build up to the killers identity, which I didn’t guess...... all simply told.

I would recommend this one for all medieval murder mystery fans.  

Sadly, the author Ariana Franklin passed away earlier this year but she leaves us with three more in this series --

The Serpent’s Tale (aka The Death Maze)
Relics of the Dead (aka Grave Goods)
A Murderous Procession (aka The Assassin’s Prayer)

This is my 3rd and final read in The Great Transworld Crime Caper Challenge

This is my 4th read in the Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge 2011 hosted by Book Chick City

For more on Ariana Franklin please click here

Book Review: FULL DARK HOUSE BY CHRISTOPHER FOWLER

Genre:  Crime & Mystery
Published by:  Bantam  (Sept 2004)
Pages:  412  (Paperback)
My Rating:  9.5 / 10

Blurb from the back of the book:

Arthur Bryant and John May of the Met’s little-known Peculiar Crimes Unit are London’s longest-serving detectives.  When a bomb claims Bryant’s life, it ends a partnership that has lasted for over half a century.
Desperately searching for clues to the killer’s identity, May becomes convinced that the answer is to be found in their very first assignment together.  It was in London, during the Blitz, and it all began when a beautiful dancer was found without her feet …....

This is the 1st book in the Bryant & May detective series and it introduces us to the two men who first met over 60 years ago.  Arthur Bryant, the ‘bright-eyed and restless’ young man who was ‘filled to exhaustion with ideas’ , ‘distracted and a little awkward’ and who ‘said what he meant’ ….... and John May, the ‘reserved, serious one’ who ‘meant what he said’.

The story starts in the present on the night that a bomb has obliterated the PCU’s office where Bryant (who was an insomniac) was working.  May is devastated and vows to solve the murder but, on investigating, he realises that the answer lies in the past.

The plot weaves nicely between the present and the past as we are introduced to a whole host of quirky characters in the dark, secret world of Theatre life in 1940.  Bryant and May bicker and argue like an old married couple, trying to solve not one but several murders in the Theatre, and a strange phantom is sighted by several of the cast of the play.  Could this be the murderer or is he just a figment of their nervous imagination?

This is a very enjoyable and dark comedy of a story, the character’s backgrounds are described in detail, the original and intelligent plot is full of twists, and Christopher Fowler’s use of language is very clever.

Bryant and May are two very endearing grumpy old men who complemented each other very well and I did love their humorous conversations!

The narrative driven plot enhanced the story forwards very nicely to its unexpected and surprising conclusion.

This is my 3rd read in The Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge 2011 hosted by Book Chick City

This is my 2nd read in The Great Transworld Crime Caper Challenge

There are another 7 books in this wonderfully quirky series and I look forward to reading them all! They are --

• The Water Room (2004)
• Seventy-Seven Clocks  (2005)
• Ten Second Staircase  (2006)
• White Corridor  (2007)
• The Victoria Vanishes  (2008)
• Bryant and May on the Loose  (2009)
• Off the Rails  (2010)

For more on Christopher Fowler please click here

Have you read any or all of these books?

Which one do you think is the best?

Leave a comment and I will put a link to your review

BOOK REVIEW: THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE BY ALAN BRADLEY

Genre: Mystery

Published by: Orion (Feb 2010)

Pages: 358 (Paperback)

My Rating: 9.5/10

THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE BY ALAN BRADLEY

About the Book:

For very-nearly-eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, the discovery of a dead snipe on the doorstep of Buckshaw, the crumbling de Luce country seat, was a marvellous mystery - especially since this particular snipe had a rather rare stamp neatly impaled on its beak. Soon Flavia discovers something even more shocking in the cucumber patch and it's clear that the snipe was a bird of very ill omen indeed. As the police descend on Buckshaw, Flavia decides it is up to her to piece together the clues and solve the puzzle. Who was the man she heard her father arguing with? What was the snipe doing in England at all? Who or what is the Ulster Avenger? And, most peculiar of all, who took a slice of Mrs Mullet's unspeakable custard pie that had been cooling by the window...?

My Thoughts:

I absolutely loved this book, it has all the ingredients of a typical English cozy mystery: set in the 1950's, an old crumbling country house in a small village, quirky characters, a mysterious dead body, strange happenings and an amateur sleuth who stumbles upon the clues right under the noses of the local police. Wonderful stuff!

Flavia is a most unusual little girl in some ways; obsessed with chemistry (she has her own lab on the top floor of the old house), she has acute hearing, is old beyond her years, has 2 horrible older sisters who treat her with disdain, and upon whom she likes to conduct experiments without their knowledge!

Her curiosity is first aroused when a dead bird is found on the doorstep and she wonders why her father is so horrified by it, and then a stranger's dead body is found in the cucumber patch, gasping his last words to her, all of which 'sets her mind into a tailspin' and which leads her into danger and excitement by unravelling the clues little by little.

I loved her vivid imagination --

'Fingers of friendship,' he said, whatever that meant.

Fingers of friendship? Had I just been given the secret handshake of some rustic brotherhood that met in moonlit churchyards and hidden copses? Was I now inducted, and would I be expected to take part in unspeakably bloody midnight rituals in the hedgerows? It seemed like an interesting possibility.

Alan Bradley's novel brings perfectly to life an era just after the War when life seemed simpler and slower with his acute observations of people. I laughed, I smiled, I sympathised, I was horrified, I cared about the characters. I was immersed in the story and didn't want it to end.

This is the first in the Flavia de Luce Mysteries and the website with lots more information is here

The 2nd book is called 'The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag' which I shall be reading and reviewing shortly.

The 3rd book in the series is called 'A Red Herring Without Mustard' and is published later this year.

Source: Borrowed from the local library

MYSTERY & SUSPENSE READING CHALLENGE 2011

I'm taking part in the Mystery & Suspense Reading Challenge for 2011 in which the goal is to read 12 books in 12 months starting from 1st January -- thanks to Book Chick City for hosting this -- just click here for details and to sign up.