Tales Between the Pages

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Here’s the problem: it starts slow. It took me a very long time to reach the halfway point (I kept falling asleep. The kind of asleep where you’re in the middle of reading and suddenly are waking up because the Kindle hits you in the face.). But once I passed the halfway point, the pacing and plot really started to improve. I read the rest quickly and really enjoyed it. I want to tell you all that I really loved “The Revenant of Thraxton Hall” but I just can’t. Here’s what I can tell you:

Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde are paired-up in a Victorian style buddy cop drama. This was funny and interesting at first. I never realized that the two real-life authors knew each other long enough for Entwistle to conceive the idea of pairing them up as a crime-solving duo. Arthur Conan Doyle’s character felt real. Oscar Wilde’s, however, did not. I think he’s portrayed as more of a stereotype than anything else. I would have been more happy if his character spent less time preening and more time surprising us. Entwistle convinced me a few times that Wilde was faking for the sake of the case. But, alas. He wasn’t.

Entwistle finally found a writing groove that kept me from falling asleep. The story is interesting and has an interesting premise. I think its flaws lay in its execution. The prose in the first half of the book felt overwrought, like the author was trying too hard to sound Victorian. Maybe that’s why I kept falling asleep. Victorian novels and I don’t have the best track record. Or, maybe I just got used to the style as the book progressed. But, in the end, I found myself in a reading groove that allowed me to really enjoy the story.

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So basically, I just liked “The Revenant of Thraxton Hall”. It’s a solid three-star read that wasn’t bad but wasn’t stellar either. I would recommend this book to people who really enjoy Victorian inspired novels and to people who always figure out “whodunnit” beforehand.