Saturday 16 November 2013

CRIME REVIEW: Mangle Street Murders 1: The Mangle Street Murders - M R C Kasasian


Release Date: 07/11/13
Publisher:  Head of Zeus

SYNOPSIS:

Gower Street, London, 1882: Sidney Grice, London's most famous personal detective, is expecting a visitor. He drains his fifth pot of morning tea, and glances outside, where a young, plain woman picks her way between the piles of horse-dung towards his front door. Sidney Grice shudders. For heaven's sake - she is wearing brown shoes. March Middleton is Sidney Grice's ward, and she is determined to help him on his next case. Her guardian thinks women are too feeble for detective work, but when a grisly murder in the slums proves too puzzling for even Sidney Grice's encyclopaedic brain, March Middleton turns out to be rather useful after all...Set between the refined buildings of Victorian Bloomsbury and the stinking streets of London's East End, THE MANGLE STREET MURDERS is for those who like their crime original, atmospheric, and very, very funny.


REVIEW:

Crime stories set in Victorian England are always going to draw parallels between what occurs within and what has gone before, in particular Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What happens within this book is a story that has a solid enough beginning, adequate prose and characters that were solid enough to help carry the story out. But for me it didn’t stand out from the crowd.

That was the let down and whilst the premise solid pretty well, the book overall sadly didn’t quite deliver what I was hoping for. That said, there are worse books to spend your cash on but if you want something that’s ground breaking, then sadly this isn’t it.

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