Spectre Collie

Book
The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman

Series
Book 4 in the Thursday Murder Club series

Synopsis
A heroin smuggling ring drops off a valuable shipment in a shop owned by one of the old friends of the Thursday Murder Club. The plan is to have a handler pick it up the next day, and he’ll be able to make a tidy profit just by keeping quiet about it. But a few days later, he’s found murdered in his car, and the box of heroin has gone missing. The club resolves to find out who murdered their friend, and the case will end up involving every one of their increasingly growing group of colleagues and acquaintances, as well as getting them involved with drug smugglers, art forgers, online scam artists, shady government organizations, and murderers with multiple levels of experience.

Notes
This series started out aggressively cozy, just on the verge of being insufferable, but managed to win out on charm. The stories have gotten better with each installment, finding a good balance between a cozy charming mystery story where you’re hanging out with a bunch of familiar characters, and making them all feel like real people with real concerns instead of just a bunch of stereotypes about the elderly.

The Last Devil to Die is unquestionably the best in the series, both for keeping up with a twisting plot and also giving the reader time with each member of a cast of characters that’s grown to unwieldy proportions. But most of all, it deals with the death of a main character across several chapters that are extraordinarily well written. It’s sentimental without being maudlin, respectful without being cold, and all handled in a way that feels honest and not manipulative. It’s an extended series of emotional gut punches that feel earned in a series that’s always shown affection and respect for its characters.

This feels like the last book in the series, but Osman quickly assures readers in the afterword that it’s not. He’s just wrapping up the first four-book run of the story and taking a break to concentrate on a different series of mysteries. I think it’s a good call, and it’s definitely going into a hiatus on a high note, reminding us why we’ve gotten to feel like these characters are friends, instead of growing tired of over-exposure.

Synopsis
An excellent wrap-up to the first four books of this series, balancing the obligations of a twisty murder mystery with readers’ desire to spend more time with characters they’ve gradually gotten attached to.

Book
William by Mason Coile

Synopsis
Henry is a robotics expert living in a refurbished Victorian house with his pregnant wife Lily, a genius programmer and tech company CEO. Their marriage has become strained, mostly because of Henry’s crippling agoraphobia that keeps him trapped inside the house. Out of loneliness, he’s been going into the attic to work on a secret project: a highly-advanced, self-aware robot named William. But he suspects that something has gone horribly wrong with his creation, as William is cruel and manipulative, as if he’s been possessed by some dark, nihilistic force of destruction. When Lily brings some of her work colleagues to meet Henry, the four soon find themselves trapped inside the high-tech house with the evil robot and whatever dark entity wants all of them dead.

Notes
This is a very quick and easy read with short, propulsive chapters; I sped through the first several chapters one night and finished it on a short plane flight the next day.

Unfortunately, the dialogue is clunky and amateurish, the characters are extremely shallow, most of the conversations are frustratingly circular since the author doesn’t want to give too much away, and the events are still almost completely predictable. After less than 50 pages, I’d already predicted everything that was going to happen, and I was about 95% correct.

There are a couple of good horror story moments, and I was compelled to reach the ending without ever being tempted to abandon it. On the whole, it feels like the novelization of an episode of a Syfy Channel horror anthology series that almost certainly never existed.

Verdict
A quick but disappointing read, with just enough forward momentum, and just enough of an interesting concept at the end, to keep it from feeling like a waste of time. It’s too bad that so many of the concepts are so familiar that it becomes completely predictable. People have been doing smart-house-out-of-control stories since at least 1999, and of course evil robot stories for far longer, but the idea of combining them with ghosts and demons is a premise that might’ve worked if the execution had been stronger.

Book
Unruly by David Mitchell

Synopsis
The comedian goes through the history of the British monarchy, from the beginnings of post-Roman rule through the reign of Elizabeth I, devoting a chapter to each monarch and a brief description of their rise and rule.

Notes
How much you enjoy this book depends on how much you like David Mitchell. In case that seems obvious: I’d been expecting this to be structured like a history book, covering a subject I knew (or remembered?) very little about, but given a lighter touch to keep it from being so dry. Instead, it’s a bit more like having Mitchell go off on tangents, personal anecdotes, peevish observations about modern life in the UK, and his opinions on the concept of monarchy, while hovering generally around the topic of the monarch in question.

Which isn’t necessarily bad, because he does manage to deliver exactly what’s promised by the book’s premise and cover. And to Mitchell’s credit, while he doesn’t go into much depth about the monarchs — or more accurately, he’s inconsistent in how deep or shallow he goes within each chapter — it’s highly unlikely that I would’ve remembered the details if he had. I’ve already forgotten the names of most of the Anglo-Saxon rulers, and I still can’t remember the difference between the various Henrys, Edwards, and Richards.

I’m not sure who exactly is the target audience, though, besides fans of David Mitchell. Everything seems to be written for audiences in Great Britain, since there are frequent mentions of areas of England, or personalities, politicians, or stores, with the assumption that they don’t need to be given any more context. It also seems to assume that some parts of English history or some monarchs are universally known, to the degree that I wonder whether he’s expecting too much of non-English readers, or if I simply wasn’t paying attention in European history classes. I felt dumb for not knowing that William the Conqueror was the first Norman king of England, and I’m still not sure whether I should feel dumb or just feel American.

However, it did finally give me a high-level understanding of the differences between Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Plantagenets, and Tudors; as well as an extremely high-level understanding of the overall timeline and where events like the Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, and the War of the Roses fit in.

Verdict
Does exactly what it says on the cover, and if you’re a fan of David Mitchell, you’ll probably enjoy it a lot. For me, it was slow reading (but excellent for helping me fall asleep!) and even without being bogged down with too many dates or location names, still managed to have a lot of info that I’m sure I won’t retain. What I will retain, probably, is the equivalent of what British children learn in their first couple years of history classes.