The Curse of the House of Foskett

The Gower Street Detective, Book 2

By: M. R. C. Kasasian

Narrated by: Lindy Nettleton

The highly anticipated second novel in the charming, sharply plotted Victorian crime series starring a detective duo to rival Holmes and Watson

125 Gower Street, 1882. Sidney Grice once had a reputation as London's most perspicacious personal detective. But since his last case led an innocent man to the gallows, business has been light. Listless and depressed, Grice has taken to lying in the bath for hours, emerging in the evenings for a little dry toast and a lot of tea. Usually a voracious reader, he will pick up neither book nor newspaper. He has not even gathered the strength to reinsert his glass eye. His ward, March Middleton, has been left to dine alone.

Then an eccentric member of a Final Death Society has the temerity to die on his study floor. Finally Sidney and March have an investigation to mount - an investigation that will draw them to an eerie house in Kew and to the mysterious Baroness Foskett.

©2015 M. R. C. Kasasian (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

4

Really good, better than the first title in the series and we all want that. I'll have to see what happens in Book 3.... I've been browzing online old London newspapers collections this winter so this author's settings seemed like more of my research :-)
Filled with lots rich historical tidbits. interesting people, good story telling with a baffling but plausible mystery.
This kept going until The End which is a nice twist.

Not nice

The first was long and I knew who,I hoped it would improve with the second. March, herself is like a mirror reflection of Deanna Raybourn s violet eyed trap, only not as smart. Gryce is sick, flat and not at all like Sherlock. There’s disgusting and then disgusting and both are in this book. The rich are rotten disguised as beautiful and the poor are repugnant disguised as rotten. No, really. The Primerose character eating the dead fly isn’t enough gothic and I like Theadora Gross’s Athena Club. Not one of her books as as much gore as this. The reader is good. The story itself might be good if it were cleaned up and refocused. I will be surprised if I listen to the end

Enjoyed this book.

I love the characters in this book. The relationship between the main characters is very interesting. I hope there is another sequel.

Hmmmm, I don’t know.

The amount of Characters was very heavy and often I became confused over who was who. I very much know that in print this may have been easier to follow and go back a few pages and reference, but still pretty heavy. There seems to be an obsession with animal abuse and animal death in these books which can be almost predictable as a prose every time they leave the house. The constant reminder that March is unattractive seems heavy to me.

The Story is a good listen for the most part but I did find myself stopping and listening to another book to take a break from this one…so not very captivating is what I am trying to say.

Mixed feelings

Some of the story is enjoyable, but there are parts that I could really do without.
As others have mentioned, there is quite a bit of animal cruelty described in the series and in particular this book. I can understand pointing out the poor treatment of animals as a reality, but there are some particular scenes in this book and the next that are completely unnecessary and I'm not sure what made the author come up with this or think people would want to read it. With the contrast of a main character of not wanting to eat meat/dairy, and the animal cruelty, it made me wonder about the author. I see he was a veterinary assistant, but I'm not sure how that influenced his thinking.
The book is very long at 14 hours. It could have been shortened for sure. The plot was a bit convoluted and the end solution completely unbelievable.
The repeated themes of the character dialog gets old quickly. I wouldn't mind Sidney insulting people if it was done in a clever way, but it's not. He also repeatedly takes people's statements literally when anyone could tell that's not how they are meant. This makes for an inconsistent character in comparison with his other skills - is he supposed to be witty or dense? Either way, it's tiring to listen to.
I listened to these books for free as part of the Plus Catalog, but I don't think I would have paid for them.

fun easy listen

a great who done it tale that will have you laughing & guessing until the very end

Curse

Overall this was a good story. The worst part of it was the gross and sickening descriptions of Sidney’s eye and Rupert’s overall description, over and over.

Well written, macabre

This story is well written and performed eloquently. The descriptions of the murders are macabre- which was ok but a surprise as the 1st in this series was not so much.

Long story, but worth the listen.

What a fantastic cliffhanger!!!! I very much enjoy the characters in this series. I laughed often at the humor that is nicely knitted into the story. The main character is definitely a love him or hate him type. I think I love him. He is so consistently rude that it’s endearing.

I found all the murders in this story very graphic and gruesome. It left little to the imagination. So be on the look out for that if you are sensitive to such things.

As I noted, it was a long story. I listened to it at the 1.2x speed. Sometimes I bumped it to 1.3x speed. That helped, but it was still long.

I recommend this series if you like a good who done it story.

Read "The Mangle Street Murders" first

It's needed for context, otherwise you'll miss a lot here.

That having been said, this book proves a good sequel, though my fourth star includes Lindy Nettleton's awesome narration; the plot itself is really three stars, especially as there are regular flashbacks to March's time in India that detracted for me, especially in audio where they appeared almost randomly without any notice. Still, it's great to see Sidney and March's characters grow (though Sidney does his best to hide that). One of the best scenes was March (who had been raised in India) bravely facing an English dish of "curried vegetables" that bore as much relation to the original as passing off a can of Dinty Moore beef stew as "homemade Russian stroganoff."

Shocker of an ending makes the next book a Must Read!