The Book of the Lion, Elizabeth Daly

One of my Christmas gifts from my wife was actually an “advent calendar” — of books! Classic crime/mystery fiction, to be precise. That means I’ve been getting a bit of an education in different crime/mystery work, much of which I’d never heard of. So with Elizabeth Daly’s Gamadge, a series detective who mostly seems to investigate fakes. There was some of this book which was a bit difficult to keep up with, because it related to relationships and explanations covered in previous books — but for the most part this one can be picked up and enjoyed on its own.

Gamadge’s attention is drawn to the crime by the fact that there seems to be some elaborate fakery in order to cover up something about letters belonging to a dead poet, murdered during a drunken ramble through the city. Certain suspicious actions grab his attention, and he’s not willing to let it go… which, as ever, leads to more trouble than might’ve occurred if he’d left well alone.

It works out pretty well, and my only problem is really that I didn’t know the setup of why he’s into detecting, how he knows people who appear to be recurring characters, etc. Enjoyable, and I’d actually rather like to find the first book of the series and give that a go.

Also, points for teaching me something I didn’t know about Chaucer.

Rating: 3/5