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A review by esdeecarlson
Murder at the Serpentine Bridge by Andrea Penrose
3.0
[This title was provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review]
3 stars
After the end of the previous installment in the Wrexford and Sloane series, I was somewhat hoping that this book would give us a bit of Wrex and Charlotte’s wedding day (with the colorful assemblage of guests that must have involved), or the growing pains of a blended household. Instead, we slipped right back into business as usual with the eclectic clan and a new murder to solve.
One of the best parts of this series is the way that it plays with the cutting-edge science and technology of the day, and I think that this particular title did that well, the murdered man having been an inventor and the mystery hinging on his plans for a new invention of war. As there’s the Grand Peace celebrations going on, bringing international politics into the fray as representatives from various nations all seem to have something to gain from the murdered man’s work, which was a very nice touch.
I think at this point in the series our cast of characters is getting quite large, and I would have appreciated if we only touched on those peripheral members of the gang whose expertise would be most helpful in the case; however, Penrose seemed determined to make sure that everyone was included, and so a fair bit of the text is spent with side characters I had to remember from previous novels who would have been better suited by a brief cameo, for series super-fans, but who when squashed into the main plot felt rather superfluous, like too many cooks in the kitchen.
That said, I did absolutely love the newest addition to the cast, young Lord Lampson, an orphaned child of color despised by his well-to-do white relatives and unofficially adopted by the Wrexford/Sloane family; I hope that Falcon (Lord Lampson’s nickname) becomes a permanent addition to the household as an official ward alongside the Weasels.
I found the first three quarters or so of the novel to stand up fairly well against preceding titles, if moving a touch slow, but the climax, for me, fell apart. It involves a complicated choreography of pyrotechnics and watercraft that utterly lost me, and I didn’t really understand why things played out as they did. I’m unsure whether the ending was unsuccessful due to the author’s poor description of a complicated mapping-out of many moving parts or my own deficiency in reading that kind of action scene, but as far as I can tell the climax aimed for fast-paced suspense but in actuality took me, as a reader, out of the action and made me lose interest in what had up until then been a decent mystery.
So, thanks to the ending and the cluttered cast, this was not the most successful of Penrose’s novels, but I think it does hold up as a worthwhile read for anyone who’s made it this far in the series and is attached to the characters.
3 stars
After the end of the previous installment in the Wrexford and Sloane series, I was somewhat hoping that this book would give us a bit of Wrex and Charlotte’s wedding day (with the colorful assemblage of guests that must have involved), or the growing pains of a blended household. Instead, we slipped right back into business as usual with the eclectic clan and a new murder to solve.
One of the best parts of this series is the way that it plays with the cutting-edge science and technology of the day, and I think that this particular title did that well, the murdered man having been an inventor and the mystery hinging on his plans for a new invention of war. As there’s the Grand Peace celebrations going on, bringing international politics into the fray as representatives from various nations all seem to have something to gain from the murdered man’s work, which was a very nice touch.
I think at this point in the series our cast of characters is getting quite large, and I would have appreciated if we only touched on those peripheral members of the gang whose expertise would be most helpful in the case; however, Penrose seemed determined to make sure that everyone was included, and so a fair bit of the text is spent with side characters I had to remember from previous novels who would have been better suited by a brief cameo, for series super-fans, but who when squashed into the main plot felt rather superfluous, like too many cooks in the kitchen.
That said, I did absolutely love the newest addition to the cast, young Lord Lampson, an orphaned child of color despised by his well-to-do white relatives and unofficially adopted by the Wrexford/Sloane family; I hope that Falcon (Lord Lampson’s nickname) becomes a permanent addition to the household as an official ward alongside the Weasels.
I found the first three quarters or so of the novel to stand up fairly well against preceding titles, if moving a touch slow, but the climax, for me, fell apart. It involves a complicated choreography of pyrotechnics and watercraft that utterly lost me, and I didn’t really understand why things played out as they did. I’m unsure whether the ending was unsuccessful due to the author’s poor description of a complicated mapping-out of many moving parts or my own deficiency in reading that kind of action scene, but as far as I can tell the climax aimed for fast-paced suspense but in actuality took me, as a reader, out of the action and made me lose interest in what had up until then been a decent mystery.
So, thanks to the ending and the cluttered cast, this was not the most successful of Penrose’s novels, but I think it does hold up as a worthwhile read for anyone who’s made it this far in the series and is attached to the characters.