Reviews

I've been reading this series for a bit and picked this one up to check off the 2022 PopSugar Challenge category of "a book set in Victorian times" and it certainly hit that button (especially with Victoria actually in the epilogue).

With mysteries like these, I don't try an figure out who did it or why and that's a good thing because in this installment, there were all kinds of suspects and the truth doesn't come out until the very end.

Frey & McGray were their usual oil & water selves, but McGray was a bit more distraught in this story since someone he's close to is put on trial and faces death, so we see more erratic behavior from him.

The one thing I don't like about these books is that there are points where something is noted about what happens in the future (like with Frey & his father), but it doesn't get addressed in this book. Some call if foreshadowing, but it almost feels like we're not getting the story as it happens, but the recap afterwards and I don't care for that.

I think there will only be 2 more books in this series and given the epilogue in this one, I definitely want to find out how all this ends and will keep reading them.

maybelarry's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

4.5

squid_vicious's review against another edition

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5.0

It is always a pleasure to sink my teeth into a Frey and McGray story: Oscar De Muriel's Victorian detective stories scratch my Sherlock-Holmes-meets-the-X-Files itch, and the fact that he keeps churning them out and that they are consistently good means I have a new tome to look forward to every summer.

After Frey suffered a tragic loss at the end of "Loch of the Dead" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2446752806), he leaves Edinburgh, but McGray cannot do without his English partner very long; he comes to fetch him after his old friend Madame Katerina is involved in a séance that goes horribly wrong. Every participant of the séance except her is dead, but no one had gone in or out of the parlor in which the meeting was conducted. She claims to have seen the devil's very hand, and that a vengeful spirit is responsible for the deaths - and while McGray believes her, he knows that it will take more than that to convince a jury of her innocence.

De Muriel excels at locked-door mysteries, and his style is a breeze to read: I basically inhaled this one in a few sittings. Of course, I am an absolute sucker for stories set in Victorian Scotland, and Ian Frey and Adolphus McGray have now become old friends: I simply can't wait to see what they have been up to this time, and De Muriel has evolved their dynamic brilliantly. He makes them funny, yet moving and I can't be the only reader who has grown very attached to them. He also has a knack for unearthing the strangest ideas and wrapping them up in great plot twists that never go quite where I thought they would; I always enjoy being surprised with what he comes up with.

I am very excited to get to "The Dance of the Serpents", as a few tantalizing crumbs have been laid in this book, hinting at some pretty major stuff coming up in the lives of Frey and McGray. If you've enjoyed Oscar De Muriel's previous work, don't wait another minute and get around to this one, too!

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