We'll start off this round of reviews with some fiction.
- A Tale of Two Murders and Grave Expectations by Heather Redmond (Kensington Books, 2019). For her "A Dickens of a Crime" series, mystery author Redmond takes young journalist Charles Dickens as her detective, investigating crimes featuring plots and characters that will one day be repurposed for his novels. (The next installment, A Christmas Carol Murder, is due out in September.) Dickens investigates the strange cases that pop up around London with the help of the pretty and vivacious young Catherine Hogarth, along with his brother Fred and other characters, both real and fictional. Those who know Dickens's works well will enjoy the copious Dickensian Easter eggs scattered throughout these books; others may simply enjoy the mysteries and learn a few things about Dickens's life and world. (And if watching Charles and Catherine's relationship blossom makes your heart ache a little, well, my friend, you're not the only one.)
- Marley by Jon Clinch (Atria Books, 2019). Clinch is without question a fine writer, and one who clearly knows the original Christmas Carol forwards and backwards. He brings a prodigious imagination to bear on Dickens's characters and plotlines in writing this prequel, in which he takes the intriguing path of making Scrooge a good man who goes wrong through the noblest of motives -- trying to outwit and rein in his unabashedly crooked partner, Marley. The maneuverings and one-upmanship between the two men, and the other characters who get swept up in it all, make Marley a fascinating tale in its own right. And yet Clinch's almost unrelentingly bleak tone in this novel left a bitter aftertaste, with only the tiniest, almost imperceptible drop of hope to temper it. I was positively appalled by the fate he devised for Fan -- a fate not only cruel in itself, but one brought on by an unfathomably cruel ongoing deception of her. I can't deny Clinch's great creativity and skill -- but I can't help wishing they'd gone in a different direction.
More reviews coming shortly! (Note: As Amazon is understandably tied up at the moment, I'll be linking to publishers' sites and other booksellers' sites instead for the foreseeable future.)
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