A Drop of Corruption

by Robert Jackson Bennett

Synopsis:

An impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air – abducted from his quarters in a building whose entrances and exits are all sealed.

The brilliant and mercurial investigator, Ana Dolabra, and her assistant Dinios Kol have been called in to crack the case.

Before long, Ana discovers that they’re actually investigating a murder. Worse, the adversary seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.

Ana’s solved impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and the investigators seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, has Ana finally met an enemy she can’t defeat?

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A Drop of Corruption is a wonderful follow-up to the first book, The Tainted Cup. I’ve had the same experience with all of Robert Jackson Bennett’s books that I’ve read so far: I sink right into them and want to gobble them up, and this was no exception. To be very reductive, you might say it’s basically Sherlock Holmes in a fantasy world, but I think you’d be doing it a disservice: it’s imagining a whole fantasy world in which someone manufactured to be like Sherlock Holmes has a place and function. It’s not a retelling, not even close.

The world it’s set in is fascinating, and it expands a bit more in this installment, as we explore a kingdom not yet absorbed into the Empire but on the cusp of being so, and also get a step closer to the leviathans that haunt the edges of both books and threaten Din and Ana’s world. Din’s had a bit longer to settle into the work now, so we also follow his struggle with accepting that this is all he can do, that he and Ana will come in after the fact, and cannot prevent murders, only explain them, maybe avert some of the consequences of them and further tragedies.

In this one, Ana has an opponent a bit more worthy of her, as well. I think the only thing that didn’t quite work for me is that I could also make the leap that Ana does in figuring out the culprit and (to be euphemistic about the solution) what Thelenai needs to do, and I don’t think the reader should be able to when it’s described the way it is here. Ana is something else, and if anything the Sherlock Holmes thing also falls apart here, because she’s capable of not just connecting patterns and making logical inferences like anyone can, she’s capable of connecting the tiniest stray facts, seeing patterns that require her to tiptoe right up to total madness.

But overall I was fixated, really loved it. It’s not perfect, perhaps (nothing is), but it was a wonderful experience that exactly matched what I wanted to read right now.

Rating: 5/5