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Mystery
15th Century
England
Sebastian Foxley series Book 3
The Colour of Cold Blood is the third
in the Sebastian Foxley series by Toni Mount, and the second full-length novel.
This time, Seb
and his older brother Jude are trying hard to run their scrivener’s shop and
live a normal life. Seb is trying to enjoy married life with Emily, whom he wed
in the preceding novella, The Colour of
Gold.
Seb is dealing
with daily medieval life and its troubles - running his shop, managing
rambunctious apprentices, making ends meet even though the local clergy keep
asking for fancy psalters for free. There’s also the small problem of someone
murdering local prostitutes, and Seb’s journeyman, Gabe, is arrested for heresy
on top of it.
I found this to
be a quick read, full of nice nuances of medieval London life. It was a tad
slow to get into the actual plot of the two separate mysteries, but I enjoyed
the detail enough that it didn’t bother me. Other readers who want more action
right off the bat might find it a bit slow going. But the plot involving the
murders of the prostitutes is intriguing, and presents Seb with a very
interesting problem - how can he teach Rose, a prostitute he met and befriended
(no, really) how to read and better her situation in life without Emily
thinking the wrong thing? And his plan to rescue Gabe from Newgate and a
heretic’s execution is fun, though it perhaps requires a little more suspension
of disbelief than I think most readers can likely muster.
One thing that
confounded me, however, was Emily herself. I fully admit that I haven’t read
the first book of the series. I read the novella, which was my introduction to
the series and the characters. Unless Emily was very different in the first
book, she seems to have undergone a sea change from the novella to this novel.
In the novella, she was sweet but had a good deal of spark and seemed the sort
who wouldn’t be shy to speak up for herself. In ...Cold Blood, she was an absolute shrew throughout. The change was
jarring, as was another plot point involving her, which I will not discuss so
as to avoid spoilers, but which seemed to come out of the blue. Seb seemed
consistent and the little apprentice boys, especially Jack, were thoroughly
developed, but some of the other characters seemed inconsistent even within the
story.
Overall, while
I enjoyed the novel in general, there were a few quibbles. If you are looking
for a quick airplane read, without the necessity of deeper characters and plot
development this would do nicely to while away a few hours.
© Kristen McQuinn
I've just read and enjoyed this very much. I had already read the first in the series and it was good to catch up with the familiar characters again.
ReplyDeleteThanks Loretta! Its on my TBR mountain as well!
ReplyDelete