Customer Reviews

Swing, Swing Together: A Sergeant Cribb Mystery

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I really am enjoying the Cribb-Thackery series, and this book has the added charm of a certain young lady by the Name of Harriet Shaw. This is a wonderful Victorian series, and this book is a pure delight. It connects The book "Three Men in a Boat" and Jack-the-Ripper since these two things were all the talk of the people in 1889. We are introduced to punting on the Thames, Oxford and Teacher's school as it was in England back then. Cribb is his usual irascible self, and Thackery is still long-suffering and ponderous. I am truly sorry that Peter Lovesey has only one more book left in this enjoyable series. Each one has been wonderful and has introduced me to another aspect of Victorian life that I have never gotten in any other Victorian series. And each one has been a cracking good mystery as well.

Swing, Swing Together is a likeable enough but forgettable mystery in Peter Lovesey's Sergeant Cribb series. Cribb and Constable Thackeray are investigating a pair of homicides on the Thames. Both victims were drowned in the same way, a few days apart, and by lucky happenstance the likely suspects were spied in the middle of the night as they floated downriver: Miss Harriet Shaw, a student at the Elfrida College for the Training of Female Elementary Teachers, happened to be breaking curfew and a bunch of other rules by skinny dipping in the river. Not the done thing in Victorian England, mind, but her lapse sets Harriet on a path to adventure and romance, even if it does put her intended career as a school teacher in jeopardy. There's much talk in the book of another book, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, which told the story of a trip on the Thames taken by three men and their dog. The book was a bestseller and apparently inspired many readers to make the same trip as the book's protagonists. So it's against this historically accurate backdrop of literary enthusiasts taking to the Thames for pleasure that Cribb and Thackeray conduct their investigation, for the murderers they seek appear to be among Jerome's ardent fans.

-- Debra Hamel

PETER LOVESEY KEEPS HIS READERS GLUED TO THE PAGE IN THIS VICTORIAN MYSTERY. ONE IN A SERIES OF SARGAENT CRIBB & CONSTABLE THACKERY MYSTERIES, THIS IS SET IN THE THAMES RIVER VALLEY BETWEEN LONDON & OXFORD. OUR HEROES FROM SCOTLAND YARD ARE JOINED BY A LOCAL BOBBY & A PROPER YOUNG MISS FROM A NEARBY "LADIES COLLEGE". IT IS EASY, ENTERTAINING READING, VERY ENJOYABLE & MAKES YOU YEARN FOR THE SIMPLE DAYS OF YESTERYEAR!!READ THEM ALL!