Comment

Nov 14, 2017SkokieStaff_Steven rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
M.R.C. Kasasian’s Gower Street detective stories share many features of Oscar de Muriel’s McGray and Frey mysteries that I so much admire—a pair of comically mismatched detectives, a Victorian setting, a deft hand at complex plotting, and a sensibility that alternates gruesome descriptions of gore with humorous repartee—but Kasasian ratchets everything up to cartoon-like intensity. His detectives are Sidney Grice, who is obviously patterned after Sherlock Holmes but is even more brilliant, esoterically learned, arrogant, and misanthropic, and his long-suffering goddaughter and ward March Middleton, who bears the brunt of his verbal abuse while giving back in kind. The violence and cruelty of these books would be a bit much if they were not exaggerated to the point of being amusing, not unlike what happens in Three Stooges shorts. These books are read with great flair in the audio versions. I suggest starting with the first book in the series “The Mangle Street Murders” because Kasasian, like his protagonist, makes few concessions to those careless souls who do not follow proper order.