Dark Dawn Over Steep House, by M.R.C. Kasasian is the 5th (and I think last) book in the Gower Street Detective series. We are back in Victorian London with Sidney Grice - a personal detective - and his ward, March Middleton, who is also the narrator of the piece. They are asked to investigate the case of a missing daughter, but, as always, there is much more to this case than meets the eye. It leads to the uncovering of a serial offender who attacks women (of course), and a lot of red herrings to chase down - during which, March gets in way over her head and risks it all to solve the case. At the same time, an unsolved mystery from some time ago rears its head again ... that of Steep House ... and as both cases begin to dovetail into each other, they bring Sidney and March to the brink. Full of humour and lots of action and plot twists, this is highly entertaining, though the crimes described can be very gruesome at times. Sidney is as rude and pedantic as ever, and March brings her own highly developed funny bones, which are sprinkled with liberal doses of sarcasm, to the party. These two characters really spark off each other which is always a delight. For me, I was happy to see less of Molly, their ridiculously incompetent servant, as her continual malapropisms can become a tad wearisome when overused. I was, however, delighted to see George Pound back on the scene ... hurrah and huzzah, love is in the air again for March! There was a bit of a shock at the end, which left me reeling - but I won't say any more than that for fear of spoilers. I read the audio edition, which is narrated by Emma Gregory, who has all of these familiar characters down to a T. If this is the last in the series, it was a great one to end on, one of the best in my opinion, and I'm really going to miss these characters!
My STAR rating: FOUR.
Price I paid: £2.98.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment