Marilyn Todd

Here's what Marilyn Todd's Bad Blood has going for it
• a plot that surprises in places
• secondary characters who become perceived differently as new information appears
• an interesting side exploration of the question of whether policing should focus on preventing crime or capturing criminals after a crime has been committed
• strong central characters

Here's where it falls short—
• those strong central characters all have back stories that are so complicated and depressing that they are haunted in ways that paralyze them become irritating over the course of the book
• anachronisms galore
• relatively few moments that make it un-put-downable

If you like historical mysteries and are tolerant of characters whose ethos seems not wholly appropriate for their time and of fairly familiar plot devices you'll find Bad Blood an enjoyable bit of entertainment. If you're looking for historical mysteries that qualify as "literary fiction," Bad Blood won't suit.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.… (mere)

1895, London and Julia McAllister has found that the only way to carry on in the photography business left to her is by taking risqué photographs. One day Inspector Collingwood calls on her to inform her that some of her models have been killed, and it looks like she is being framed for their murders. So she decides that her only possible action is to find out who the murderer is.
An enjoyable Victorian murder mystery, with a touch of romance. The main characters were in the main likeable, and not working out who the killer was is a bonus. So overall a good solid start to what I presume is a new series which I look forward to reading.
A NetGalley Book… (mere)

1895, England. Because of her past Julia McAllister decides it's time to leave England but she is called to a crime scene in her role of photographer. To the scene of a female's battered body. Not only does she bring the eye of a photographer to the scene but that of a female's perspective. Julia's problems are added to when a fire nearby leaves two annoying old ladies homeless and she offers them a place to stay..
But will this be the only one body. While D.I. John Collingwood has problems of his own to contend with.
Another enjoyable and well-written historical mystery in this series… (mere)

Claudia Seferius, wife of a wealthy wine seller, has a gambling problem, and as a consequence owes a lot of money to a rather shady money-lender. To pay off her debts, she takes on a discreet clientele: wealthy and upper-class Roman men whose sexual proclivities tend toward bondage, dominance and the like. But somebody apparently knows who her clients are, because they keep turning up dead, with their eyes gouged out. Patrician Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, noble but relatively poor, is trying his hand as a detective, and he is determined to discover what Claudia knows, and how, before any more people have to die…. I quite liked a handful of short stories about Claudia that I’ve read over the years, so finally decided to give this series a try, but unfortunately I was not impressed. For starters, Claudia is an odious person, as is pretty much everybody in the book; I don’t insist on *liking* characters in books that I read, but I need to at least not hate every single one of them! The story is mostly told from Claudia’s point of view and perhaps in the early 1990s, when this was first published, the idea of writing a historical novel using modern vernacular (in this case, the cockney version of Latin - in translation of course) was very novel and new, but some 30 years later it’s fairly normal and feels a bit grating here. I think perhaps I can only stomach this character in short-story bursts, rather than at full length; definitely not for me.… (mere)