Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE: Come to Dust

SERIES: Inspector Raft Mystery #3

AUTHOR: J.S. Cook

PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press

LENGTH: 230 pages

BLURB: In the frigid winter of 1891, with the nation still reeling from the Barings bank crisis, Inspector Philemon Raft returns from an involuntary sabbatical, tasked with solving the kidnapping of highly placed peer Alice Dewberry. Thrust into a sordid underworld where the upper classes indulge in disreputable overseas investments designed to fatten their pocketbooks, Raft finds himself at loose ends without his companion, Constable Freddie Crook. Far from offering their help, the ton use every asset at their disposal to keep Raft from discovering the truth about hapless kidnap victim Alice Dewberry—who may not even exist.

Soon Raft discovers that his old nemesis, the workhouse master John Gallant, has returned to London. Gallant doesn’t say what he wants—but he knows enough to ruin Raft’s career and even his life. Raft tries to solve the case with his usual strange insight, but there are other, darker forces at work. This is a frightened London: the London of Whitechapel, of Jack the Ripper, the London of poverty, dirt and despair, where a right turn down the wrong alley could earn Raft a swift trip to the morgue.

REVIEW:

Inspector Philemon Raft has come back from a forced leave of absence with an eye on filling the time since his lover and partner, Constable Freddie Crook, is still in Argentina, recovering from his addiction and helping spy on a certain English gentleman.  Still, being handed the curious case of kidnapping victim, Miriam Dewberry, is going to require all his mental faculties, and quite of few from the young Constable Cholmondely, who is assigned to help him uncover where the young lady was spirited off to.  But Inspector Raft is not the only one trying to solve this puzzle, and it becomes a race against time and interfering aristocrats, to save the girl from her captors’ hands.  The clues keep adding up, but no making any sense, and with more and more suspects running across their path, Raft and Cholmondely, are going to have a hell of a time figuring this puzzle out.  If they are good they will save Miriam, if they are lucky they’ll save themselves.

My first thought, when I began this book, was that I really should have read the two previous books in the series.  Sadly, I didn’t realize that this book was the third Inspector Raft Mystery novel until it was too late, but I was determined to push through.  I love a good ol’ Victorian mystery novel, and something dark and gritty was right up my alley this week.  I wanted murder, was craving mystery, and demanded to be let loose on the mean streets of Victorian England–or, as the case may be, the parlors of the Victorian elite.

This story really does start out with a bang, quite literally, and I really liked how the whole story was shaping up in those first few chapters.  Sure, there were some parts where I felt lost since clearly these were characters with backstory that I should have known, but didn’t–but it was entertaining and a bit mysterious, so I chose to take the characters as they came, and hoped for the best.

Then….then everything got so bloody confusing.  This is probably to blame on the lack of backstory I had, but I spent a majority of the book unsure if Raft was a picnic basket short of a picnic.  There were some paranormal/supernatural/alienplot threads going on in this book that I just did not get.  Or maybe Raft is just crazy.  I didn’t go into this book expecting it to be filled with ghosts and visions and things, so when they popped up I had trouble judging just what was real, and what was not.   I was curious as to if these memories or visions were real, but because Raft was such a jumble of contradicting thoughts, I could never find a solid ground.

People and plot points seemed to come out of nowhere, and while I like to be kept guessing, there just didn’t seem to be some common thread to keep me from being so turned around all the time.  I think this might be the result of so many different PoVs in this story.  While I am not usually a big fan of the multiple point of view mode of storytelling, anyways, I felt that here it did tend to give away too much, too soon.  What I really wanted to read was Raft solving a mystery, but he was barely one half of the story, and since I had tried to make him my anchor, when he was gone, I felt a little lost.  Others might not find this as troublesome, but it created problems for me.  Not to mention I was really confused as to why Miriam was so scared at the beginning, but at the end her personality took a 180.  I might have missed something, in my reading, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was constantly running in the opposite direction of everyone else in the story.  It made for a really confusing read.

People who have read and liked this series before may absolutely love this book, but for anyone who hasn’t I would advise you to either go read those first, or maybe be ready to take this book slowly so you don’t get lost.  I love mystery, love solving puzzles, but this was the equivalent of a rubik cube for me.  No matter what way I turn or twist it, I’m left annoyed, confused, and probably chucking the damn thing across the room.  2 stars, with the provision that this is probably not the best way to get into the series, but it might just be a great way to continue it.  Still, not my thing at all.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Dreamspinner  ::  Amazon  ::  ARe