Warren Rochelle's Blog - Posts Tagged "amy-griswold"

Death by Silver by Melissa Scott

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Fans of Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett’s Point series, and the series’ two protagonists, Nico and Philip, will find themselves in both familiar and unfamiliar territory in this newest Scott novel, Death by Silver, co-authored with Amy Griswold, just released by Lethe Press. There are two clever men, a love affair and its complications that needs sorting, magic, a mystery that needs solving, dangerous antagonists, and a richly developed, detailed, and nuanced world, and language that is graceful and beautiful and honest and very, very witty—all familiar.

But, it is the unfamiliar territory that engaged me and kept me reading this page-turner—unfamiliar territory that is both strange and comfortable at the same time. Death by Silver is set in Victorian England, yet not quite the historical one. In this England young men who go to Oxford can study to be a metaphysician and learn a particular magic peculiar to this world, a magic that Scott and Griswold have carefully and convincingly constructed, a magic of wands and letters and signs and sigils, a magic of written words. A cantrip, written on a piece of paper and dissolved in a glass of water, can “banish [an] incipient headache” (206).

The two clever men of the novel are metaphysician Ned Mathey and private detective Julian Lynes. Mathey, “just up from Oxford,” has only recently hung out his shingle and can’t afford to turn away clients, not even the rich and arrogant father of “the bully who made Ned’s life hell at boarding school” (back cover). Edgar Nevett wants an investigation into “the matter of a curse upon certain pieces of silver owned by the Nevett family. All other remedies have failed, and the assistance of a metaphysician has become obviously necessary” (2). Whether the silver is actually cursed or whether Mr. Nevett wants the romance of a curse become something of a side issue, when he is “found dead in his study, felled by a heavy silver candlestick that lay bloody at his side” (25). When Scotland Yard seeks Ned’s assistance, he brings Julian, another old school friend, onto the case. The game is afoot.

Who murdered Edgar Nevett? And how—was a curse actually used and Ned failed to detect it? He had determined the silver candlestick to be “magically harmless,” after all. Where will solving this mystery take Edgar and Julian—how deep in to “London’s criminal underworld and sodomitical demimonde” (back cover) must they delve? Can Ned and Julian both work with Victor, the son who so bullied them at school that Julian still wishes Victor dead? The memories of what happened at school are still painful, and far closer than either Ned or Julian imagined. The beatings, the canings, still haunt both men. And, what of the mysteries of their own hearts, the mystery of who Ned and Julian are to each other, now as grown men, and no longer bullied school boys?

This carefully constructed mystery, with its red herrings, obscure clues, its scandals and secrets, and carefully imagined magic, is compelling and engaging. I started it as a book to read on a plane and I couldn’t put it down and I kept reading it long after the three-hour flight was over. Ned and Julian are charming men, real and authentic, and how they sort out their feelings for each other ring true for the repressed nuances of Victorian sexuality. The ending is very satisfying; this novel really works.

I want a sequel, a series! Highly recommended.




View all my reviews