Customer Reviews

Murder at Drury Lane: Further Adventures of the American Agent in London (Benjamin Franklin Mystery)

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An engaging, tightly plotted read with the action centering around David Garrick's Drury Lane Theatre. The author obviously did his research as there's quite a fascinating bit of detail about theatre business and acting, though not so much as to bog down the plot. The plot itself is well worked and I won't give anything away save to say he gave plenty of clues for the reader to work at solving the puzzle along with Ben and Nick (no rabbits out of a hat)...but didn't make them obvious. Ben is an charming character and 12-year-old Nick, from whose point of view the story is told, is convincingly young, and a brave, ardent young boy who uses his head and is allowed to participate fully in the adventure. There's an entire population of characters that the author does a good job of 'limning' (though as below, some things went awry) and Drury Lane Theatre really does come alive in these pages, right down to the old gleaners. There are some very good atmospheric London scenes, he takes pains with the weather and feel of the streets, and a fairly well plotted town.

There are a few jarring things, perhaps mostly for the purists: He portrayed Samuel Johnson and Magistrate John Fielding as they would have been many years in the future, not as they historically were in 1757, describing Johnson as "old" - he was only 48 at this time, even in the 18th century still considered 'of middle years' for a man of the 'middling sort', or Johnson's economic class. John Fielding was a youthful, very active 35 year old and had been on the bench for only 5 years. He also did not consider blindness to be a handicap and it was something of a non-issue for him. Perhaps the author did this to make the characters more accessible to the modern perception we have of them as older, more famous men. Similarly, there's a fair bit of business with house numbers - numbered addresses were an innovation of the 1770s and not really implemented fully until the regency era - one found one's way by parish, district and landmarks and a great deal of time was spent being lost with a plethora of pocket maps and guide books published to try to help you get found again. This does impact the plot to some extent. Another is the mustaches - big clanger - the xenophobia of the era denominated mustaches as "other" or "foreign" and an English gentlemen never wore them, much less the nobility, but there they are in all of their Victorian variety. Some of the character introduction dialog is a little stilted but again I think the author may have been trying to get information in without enlarging the book too much and detracting from the pace, which goes at a good, even clip; he does not waste his reader's time dithering around.

A good old fashioned page-turner - perhaps on a cold winter evening! All of the Franklin books I've read by this author have been enjoyable and worth finding, but this so far has been my favourite.

It's unfortunate that Amazon does not carry this book at this time - hopefully it will go back into publication. I encourage you to do what I did and purchase it here from the small bookseller program. The cover art, incidentally, is excellent. The book is suitable for high school age on up.