My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
Death in Delft by Graham Brack B
I'm going to address the elephant in the room right from the get-go. The cover of this book will likely trigger a feeling of Deja vu in regular readers of this series of book reviews. This would be due to the fact that in my Saturday Morning Post No. 176 I reviewed another historical mystery book, Men of Bone by David Penny, who's book cover bears a striking resemblance to this cover, at least in design and colors. So you're no doubt wondering, as I did, what book copied the other? Well, rest easy, I've done the research for you. I can state that this book was copyrighted in 2020, while Men of Bone was copyrighted in 2021. This book cover is the OG. Q.E.D.
With that burning question out of the way, let's get down to the review. As keen observers will note, we have, this week, a book that is solidly above average, with a grade of "B". Thank goodness. As one might deduce from the cover, this is a historical mystery set in the city of Delft in Holland during the year of 1671. The narrator, the 33 year old Master Mercurius, is a scholar at the University of Leiden. He is an ordained Protestant cleric and secretly, an ordained Catholic priest as well. The Reformation had made being a Catholic rather iffy in Holland, plus he could not be a scholar as a Catholic, so, with permission from his bishop, he takes orders as a Protestant minister as well, while keeping his ordination as a Catholic priest a secret.
In this story, he is given the task of assisting the Mayor and officials of the city of Delft in solving a mystery involving three young girls who have gone missing, one of whom has been found dead already. In Delft he meets two of the most famous residents of that city, the painter Vermeer, and the scientist Von Leeuwenhoek, who help him solve the mystery. There's plenty of history and period atmosphere in the telling of the story, though the telling of it, especially since it's a first person narrative, "feels" a little modern, but not enough to detract from my enjoyment of the story.
I will say this, I would've given my kingdom for a period map of Delft, as there is a lot of going here and going there, walking along this canal and that canal. It really would've been nice to have some sort of sketch map of the city in order to follow what was going on. As to the mystery itself, I don't want to say too much. Suffice to say I found it interesting, more from the setting and characters than the mystery itself. This is not really a who-done-it with a selection of suspects to choose from. You're along for the ride as Master Mercurius slowly unravels the threads that tie the missing girls together.
I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the character, and the setting, enough to have downloaded the second book in this series, of which I think there are nine books to date. I still have a couple of weeks of KU, so hopefully I will be able to get to it.
