Customer Reviews

Playing with Bones: A Joe Plantagenet Murder Mystery (The Joe Plantagenet Murder Mysteries)

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First Line: The girl raised her hands in a feeble attempt to save her life.

There is so much to like about this new series from Kate Ellis. Detective Inspector Joe Plantagenet is a multi-faceted character who's a bit different from your run-of-the-mill copper because he originally studied for the priesthood. His boss, Detective Chief Inspector Emily Thwaite, is a good match for him, and since she's also a wife and mother, she has a lot of history to bring to this literary plate.

When you've finished savoring the characters, there's the history of York that pervades the book (where it's thinly disguised as "Eborby"):

"He walked under Canons Bar, catching a strong whiff of urine, and looked upwards at the wooden teeth of the ancient portcullis poking out of their stone slit like the fangs of some sleeping animal-- a reminder of Eborby's warlike past. When he emerged from the shadows he saw the cathedral's golden towers looming above the crazy maze of narrow medieval streets...."


Is there a copycat killer on the loose in Eborby? This is what Joe and Emily have to investigate after the body of a young girl is found in Singmass Close, "a place that dogs refused to enter at night." All the evidence found at the scene shows an intimate knowledge of the murderer known as the Doll Strangler, a man who killed women in the exact same area in the 1950s and was never caught. Moreover, Joe and Emily are also trying to find a missing girl and an escaped convict. There won't be much sleep for any of the police in the area until all the cases are solved.

As in her Wesley Peterson mystery series, Ellis shows how talented she is at weaving together several plot threads and imbuing them with a sense of the history of the place. What sets this newer series apart is not just the location but a sense of the supernatural-- as if Eborby is so saturated with history that spirits of long-dead centuries still walk the streets and have a say in what happens in the present day. This sense of the supernatural is not a strong one. It's just enough to add a touch of spice, a bit of the "what if". It's the thinnest ribbon of smoke in the breeze.

Ellis's sense of place is so very strong that I feel as though I'm walking the streets of "Eborby" with people like Joe and Emily that I'm beginning to think of as friends. I also feel as though Joe is soon going to supplant Wesley in my affections.

What's a woman to do?

I was telling a friend recently that at some point fictional serial killers and their antics get a bit silly. (I was thinking at the time of an American author whose serial killer kidnapped strippers and made them-- under threat of death-- pole dance until exhaustion then killed them anyway.) However, that was pretty much my feeling about The Doll Strangler who left mutilated Victorian doll beside his dead mutilated victims.

There was some potential in the supernatural in this book-- the Ragged School and the idea of the pathetic ghosts of starved Victorian children buried in and around the building, disturbed by renovation is quite creepy. But Ellis' Diocesan Expert on Creepy Things would be eaten for lunch by Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins. In fact, I'm not sure why he even appeared because no one wanted his help.

Joe Plantagenet is remarkably bland despite having an appropriately angsty background-- dead wife, dead former partner. His boss, DCI Emily Thwaite, gets the role of the detective who can't get home to see her family that Wesley Peterson carries in Ellis' other series as well as DI Gerry Heffernan's weight problem. That just leaves Plantagenet with commitment issues.

I was also not impressed with the resolution-- there is a high degree of coincidence involved and a shocking degree of lock picking by the police. While I know that English law does not accept the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine, the amount of breaking the close by the police to move the plot along was pretty unbelievable.

I went to some trouble to get the audio version read by Gordon Griffin. I was not impressed. Mr. Griffin's range seemed limited and for some reason he frequently used a stage whisper that I personally found irritating. He did not mispronounce words though and his pacing was good. It's just that I missed the distinct accents that some top of the line readers bring to their audio book work.

It will likely be a while before I pick up another Joe Plantagenet crime novel, audio or otherwise.

#2 DI Joe Plantagenet mystery set in fictional Eborby, UK--modeled after the city of York. A young girl is found dead in a dark close, strangled and then with a strange mutilation--her big toe of her left foot is severed, and an old porcelain doll is laid next to her with its toe also removed. When one of the constables brings to Joe and his boss DCI Emily Thwaite's attention a book he's reading about historical murders that contains an excerpt about the Doll Strangler of Singmass Close, they realize the strong similarity to the strangulation of four women back in the 1950's. The toe mutilation was never reported anywhere, so whoever is doing this now must have some connection to the first killer. Another case involving a missing girl intersects with the murder case.

I enjoyed this second entry in this series although there seemed to be way too many red herrings and a lot of huge coincidences happening in order for things to fall into place as they do. Still, I am looking forward to the next in series and also to trying the author's other long-standing mystery series.

As with all of Kate Ellis' books this one proved to be an adictive story. She has a way of putting you in the story. Her new character Joe Plantagenet is as interesting as Wesley Petersen.