First, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone and anyone who has read my blog posts throughout the year. I never thought that I would actually get around to doing this so for it to already be my 81st post is something of a shock. I hope I have provided you with some good reads and recommendations and that I will do so in 2024 as well. My reading may shift a little next year as I start reading more of the genres I’ve neglected and less of the popular on social media books but I hope that it won’t affect my writing or commentary on the topics at hand. Now, let’s wrap up the year by getting up-to-date with one of my favourite historical fiction series.

Murder at the Merton Library by Andrea Penrose is the seventh book in the Wrexford and Sloane Mystery series and after waiting over a year for this to come out I must admit it was a little underwhelming. It’s a brilliant book, don’t get me wrong, but there are a few things that held back my enthusiasm while reading.

I will do my best to refrain from stating direct spoilers but I will start off by saying that the balance Andrea Penrose creates in her books makes the Wrexford and Sloane series so enjoyable to read. There’s always science and art, good and evil, high society and the slums, and so forth. It makes the setting feel like its on even ground and that multiple facets of society and setting are under inspection. We can enjoy the nighttime escapades of a handful of characters while returning to the structured soiree a few others attend. We have the adults and their developing plans and the boys on their trips learning new things too. This balance makes the inclusion of multiple perspectives more palatable and helps create fluidity in the overarching plot. You can tell it’s a Wrexford and Sloane novel, or an Andrea Penrose novel, by its equilibrium.

I also appreciate the believable conflicts and internal issues the character face, how these preoccupations clash with the direction the investigations need to take and the fast-paced action that pulls the rug out from underfoot. This is a theme present in the series – the moral dilemma of bringing others into the messes created and putting people at risk – that bring humanity and flaws to these characters. If they were perfect detectives without a shred of care for others around them this series would be very short, but instead we have characters empathising with each other (sometimes combinations that one wouldn’t expect) and it helps to root the moral goodness into the foundations of this series.

Now, onto the critiques. This is a bit of a slow-burn. The pacing and tension are low for a large portion of this novel compared to others in the series but I think that simply comes down to the number of deaths in each book. When there are fewer deaths the tension won’t spike as much. The way in which the two cases start off and how they merge didn’t create as much of a buzz as I anticipated, again linking to the low tension. When things started picking up, and boy did they pick up, it was a gripping read and I zoomed through the pages as I’m known to do with Andrea Penrose novels. It’s just that things were mellow for a while. My love for the description and characterisations kept me engaged, but that’s not always going to work. It’s a bit like the dip in excitement that I got in a few of the Lady Darby Mystery novels.

I still throughly enjoy this series and would recommend it to everyone, especially those who have read the Veronica Speedwell series by Deanna Raybourn and the Sebastian St. Cyr novels by C.S. Harris. It has a more mature lens to the way characters act and think but there is still a lighthearted aspect to character dynamics, relationships and interactions that make this a warmer series to read.