The Bones of Paris: 11/08/15

The Bones of Paris by Laurie R. King is the last thing on I read on NetGalley and a big part of my decision to stop taking eGalleys as reviews. I've been reading Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series from the very beginning. I've wanted to read her other books too and The Bones of Paris seemed like a good opportunity.

Stuyvesant is hired to help with a series of murders. The clock is ticking because another person has gone missing and is believed to be the next victim. Among the suspects are some of the pop culture icons of the 1920s.

Except, and this is a problem with ARCs in general, I didn't know until after I started reading it, that it was the second of the Harris Stuyvesant books. I still get weekly pitches for books that are part of a series that I'm only hearing about now through the pitch.

The appeal for me was the time and the setting: the 1920s and the Paris catacombs. I had just finished listening to The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan, the first of the original 39 Clues series. So the location was fresh in my mind and I wanted to see it in an adult mystery context.

My initial reaction was a rather claustrophobic one — a response both to the setting (though most of the book isn't actually in the catacombs) and to the presentation. Many ebooks formats for web browser reading lack proper margins and the text just doesn't flow like it does on a printed page. I realized a third of the way through that I needed to stop reading and wait to read it in its proper format after I read Touchstone.

The Mary Russell series is written in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle — naturally. The Harris Stuyvesant books seem to be written in the style of Edgar Wallace — a more prolific British author than Doyle, but one with less staying power, it seems.

Four stars

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