I think I might be getting into mysteries. Not that I haven't been into them before, but I'm solidly a speculative fiction reader, and haven't usually sought out non-speculative mysteries, only read them when they tumbled into my lap. But I have a novel idea I've been turning over in my head, a secondary-world fantasy murder mystery, and so I've been branching out.
THE TUMBLING GIRL didn't exactly tumble down in front of me. In fact, it was a bit of a search--thinking I ought to read more mysteries to get a better feel for the form, I asked a librarian for a decent, recent mystery, she looked this up, and then it wasn't on the shelf. It took three librarians and a page to find it on the recently-checked in cart. And then, I got covid and was not only quite sick for days on end, but have remained sequestered at home, bored and miserable and almost too tired to read.
Almost too tired, but not quite. In between naps, I spent most of yesterday reading this book and it was pretty good. It's difficult to evaluate a book as a story when you read it to try to analyze its structure, but I think if one were reading this for fun, one would have fun. And it actually worked perfectly for my purposes of searching out the story structure of a mystery. This is a carefully constructed book with a lot of appreciation for its genre. I can definitely recommend it, especially for fans of historical British stuff (not my usual stomping grounds) who prefer their historical without period-accurate misogyny.
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