Customer Reviews

Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte

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Charlotte Bronte wants to mourn the deaths of her sisters Anne and Emily, but Jane Eyre will not allow her to. She feels survival guilt as her two novelist siblings never saw their writings make it though now thanks in part to her tale Jane Eyre, she and her late siblings are the talk of the nation.

Charlotte has also ended her relationship with her beloved John Slade, whom she met during her Moscow adventure last year (see Secret Adventures Of Charlotte Bronte). Famous author William Makepeace Thackeray has mentored Charlotte and helps her deal with sudden fame and entrance to the literary lions of London. She is escorted on a tour of Bedlam Psychiatric Hospital, but one inmate looks like Anne's twin and worse another has to be John. She challenges the officials re the latter's identification and told he is Polish expatriate Josef Typinski, who escaped when a murder causes chaos. The authorities accuse Josef of the homicide while Charlotte gets involved.

Rotating perspective between Charlotte's journal and Slade's escapades, readers will fully believe the last Bronte sister's adventures this time in England. The story line is fast-paced, filled with action and feels plausible even with Charlotte turning into an amateur sleuth of sorts. As with the previous Charlotte Bronte's secret adventures (in Moscow), fans of Victorian thrillers will be thrilled reading about the heroine's bedlam escapades.

Harriet Klausner

Once again, Laura Joh Rowland has written a fascinating and fun mystery, this time with Charlotte Bronte as sleuth. I love that she so seamlessly works in biographical details of Charlotte Bronte's life, real cases of Victorian-era serial killers, and lots of famous historical personages.

I think that Laura Joh Rowlands should've stopped with the first Charlotte Bronte adventure. This one was just too hard to fathom. First of all there is the backflashes to Russia where John Slade is assuming yet another identity and infiltrating the Tsar's court in some more espionage. Then we go to London where Charlotte goes to Bedlam where she finds who she thinks is John Slade on a stretcher being tormented. After pursuing an actress who is also a Russian spy and witnessing her death by stabbing, Charlotte then ends up in prison and then in Bedlam supposedly being "protected" by the government. There is this fleeing to her home and then another adventure to France where she is again hooked up with Slade in pursuit of a mad scientist who supposedly has discovered "germ warfare." More bad guys, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, William Makepeace Thackeray, and a host of other people are put in harm's way. One wonders when this all will end and this is one book where I hoped it would end soon because after ships, trains, carriages, and a hot air ballooon, even I was feeling jet lagged! I think maybe Ms. Rowlands was getting a bit confused also, because she had the villain, Dr. Kavanaugh, operating the hot air balloon in pursuit of himself! I think she meant Dr. Crick but then again this is poor editing like I've seen in a lot of recent books. Personally I like the mysteries of Sano Ichiro the best!