Book Review: Some Danger Involved by Will Thomas

Genre: Victorian Detective That Is Not Sherlock

Basic Summary: Main Character gets hired by Detective Cyrus who also unlocks the Tragic Backstory ™.

Rating: 3/5

Warnings: The Racists. Also, descriptions of violence but not very graphic. Maybe a C minus in graphic violence. Probably lower than that. Also, religion is brought up – not in a preachy way – but there is talk about religious zealousness and such. 

Review: 

I don’t normally read Victorian Detective novels. I didn’t even know that was a big thing. It’s a big thing, though. When I first saw the book in the store, I thought it would have a good amount of humor from the title. Read the summary and realized it probably wouldn’t have that much humor. I, thus, had put in on my shelves for years to be unread.

This spookathon (which will have passed when this is posted) I decided it would be my thriller to read. 

It wasn’t very suspenseful but then again, as said, I don’t read a lot of Victorian detective novels.  The crimes in the novel were pretty repugnant and were antisemitic. It was intriguing to see how racial issues were handled in this novel. The Jewish population in the book are being blamed for jobs being taken and other things. It’s…it’s….definitely art imitating life at this point with the rhetoric.   

The pacing was a bit slow for me in the first half of the novel but not entirely uninteresting. When it is time to reveal the mastermind behind the crimes, the plot is sped up A LOT. It felt rushed. The mastermind gave a speech and it didn’t feel ironic so it went into being cliche. 

Despite the pacing, I did find the motivations and crimes themselves interesting. I liked the majority of the characters except the main character (mainly because he seemed to focus on women’s looks a lot…). Cyrus Barker was a great personality for being the detective. 

Good use of descriptions and balancing action (people’s movements and what they were doing) as well as dialogue. 

If I come across the next book in the series, I would read it.

May you get lost in a book,

Chrissy