FEATURED AUTHOR - Alice K. Boatwright is the author of the Ellie Kent mysteries, which debuted with Under an English Heaven, winner of the 2016 Mystery and Mayhem Grand Prize for Best Mystery. The series continues with What Child Is This? and In the Life Ever After. Alice has also published other fiction, including Collateral Damage, three linked novellas about the Vietnam War era; Sea, Sky, Islands, a chapbook of stories set in Washington’s San Juan Islands; and Mrs. Potts Finds Thanksgiving, a holiday parable…
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Recent comments: User reviews
Oh, dear. Something is very wrong here.... Capt. Hugh Drummond, man among men--the only man his merry band would follow besides the King--has turned into Bertie Wooster. As far as I can see, he and his band of crusaders have all become candidates for membership in P. G. Wodehouse's Drones Club. I am so confused. Where is our stalwart hero? In the first book in the series he was sharp, clever, keen-witted. Now he is described throughout London ,and by someone who has known him since childhood, as "the most vacuous ass in England." Huh?
At first I thought this was just a cover like Zorro or Sir Percy Blakeney and wondered what would come next...pimpernels left at the scene? But then when he couldn't figure out the workings of an electrified fence, I began to doubt the "cover" and wondered what the author was doing? I finished the book still unsure.
Drummond has this Black Gang, see, and they're all the ex-soldiers from the first book, but they seem to have misplaced most of their intelligence between books one and two. Their only moments of lucidity appear to be when they don their black robes and go into action. The moment the action is done, they revert back into superciliousness.
I told my husband--who started me on these--that this was too stupid for words. He just laughed at me and said, "Think comic book. This isn't War and Peace, you know." I'll say it isn't!
He says I should continue, so I'll take a stab at number three (The Third Round), but my expectations have fallen flat.
If you want to try this, you can't just suspend disbelief, you have to hang it by the neck until dead. Then perhaps, maybe, possibly, you can enjoy?