Rating: 
Summary: I'd give it 10 stars!
Review: The first I heard of Bruce Alexander was in an amazon.com e-mail about new mysteries where it told of his coming "Smuggler's Moon." The title was intriguing so I checked out his books and read an exerpt of one and ordered "Blind Justice," the first of his Sir John Fielding mysteries. I'll be ordering more! "Blind Justice" arrived late Friday afternoon and I finished it around midnight on Saturday. Alexander's characters are wonderful. Sir John Fielding and Jeremy Proctor are perfect together as they search out clues and find the perpetrator of the crime. All of the side characters are intriguing. The setting is great: about 1768 London. You really get the feel of the time. I would guess it's similar to Sherlock Holmes, but I've never felt pulled to read Conan Doyle. This has it all: Covent Garden, the Bow Street Runners, local pubs, courts, thieves and murderers, servants 'below stairs,' Lords and Ladies. The smell, taste, and feel of the time. Greed, cruelty, compassion. Nothing sappy or sugary. It's strong. It moves swiftly. It's totally engrossing without resorting to gratuitous violence or sex. An absolutely fabulous read!
Rating:
Summary: I'd give it 10 stars!
Review: The first I heard of Bruce Alexander was in an amazon.com e-mail about new mysteries where it told of his coming "Smuggler's Moon." The title was intriguing so I checked out his books and read an exerpt of one and ordered "Blind Justice," the first of his Sir John Fielding mysteries. I'll be ordering more! "Blind Justice" arrived late Friday afternoon and I finished it around midnight on Saturday. Alexander's characters are wonderful. Sir John Fielding and Jeremy Proctor are perfect together as they search out clues and find the perpetrator of the crime. All of the side characters are intriguing. The setting is great: about 1768 London. You really get the feel of the time. I would guess it's similar to Sherlock Holmes, but I've never felt pulled to read Conan Doyle. This has it all: Covent Garden, the Bow Street Runners, local pubs, courts, thieves and murderers, servants 'below stairs,' Lords and Ladies. The smell, taste, and feel of the time. Greed, cruelty, compassion. Nothing sappy or sugary. It's strong. It moves swiftly. It's totally engrossing without resorting to gratuitous violence or sex. An absolutely fabulous read!
Rating: 
Summary: nice period piece; implausible solution
Review: The good news is that 18th century England is the perfect antidote to the hoity-toity victorian setting of so many other mysteries. The bad news is that although it has all the trappings of a classic puzzle mystery (including a locked room and a showdown at the end), the solution is so unbelievable that if I had thought of it myself I would have immediately discarded it. I felt betrayed.
Rating: 
Summary: Blind Justice
Review: This 18th-century mystery, set in London, struck me as being very cautious. The author certainly broke no taboos, and kept close to traditional, even sometimes hackneyed, mystery genre conventions. Nevertheless, it was readable and introduced interesting characters.Alexander writes well, unremarkably, in a manner which calls no stylistic attention to itself. His setting, though not exactly untrodden in fiction, comes agreeably to life. In Blind Justice, the young orphan Jeremy Proctor comes to London after his father's tragic death in the pillory, and becomes a protege of the blind magistrate Sir John Fielding (based on a historical personage). Fielding is certainly an original and appealing character, and the author never forgets to work his blindness realistically into the story. Proctor becomes involved in helping Fielding solve the murder of one Lord Goodhope. The plot moves along pretty well, though there's a hackneyed "drawing-room" scene at the end. I like my historical fiction a little grittier than this somewhat "nice" portrayal, and Alexander has an unfortunate tendency to tell rather than show. I found this reasonably entertaining and it's worth noting that the third in the series, Watery Grave (I haven't yet read the second installment) is an improvement.
Rating:
Summary: Good mystery - but a tad jumpy
Review: This is a good mystery, written (so it seems to me) in the style of the Sherlock Holmes stories. That doesn't lessen the enjoyment at all; on the contrary, it makes the story easier to read. And it would also make it easier to follow, if it weren't for the fact that there seem to be a lot of gaps in the story. I wasn't at all sure why several characters came into the tale, and where exactly they figured into it. But I did enjoy what I could follow of the mystery, and I was affected by the subplot of Sir John's wife and her illness. Sir John and Jeremy are two very promising characters, and I hope to see more of them in future installments of this series. Hopefully Mr. Alexander will improve on his "flow" in the next book.
Rating: 
Summary: Fiction rings as true as history
Review: This is a very entertaining historical murder mystery set in pre-Revolutionary War London. The principal character is Sir John Fielding, the blindfolded sightless justice, whose condition and whose ideals indeed enable us to see him as the living personification of "Justice" (traditionally blindfolded) but who is, in his own way, more clear-sighted than anyone else. And the narrator through whose perspective we hear the story is plucky 13 year-old Jeremy Proctor of Stoke Poges, who flees his home town after a family tragedy, to find what appears to be his destiny as Sir John's ward, his eyes, his investigator, and his Watsonian-like sounding board. Quite an accomplishment for a 13 year-old but then, how many 13 year-olds TODAY (for that matter, how many adults)are familiar with the works of Voltaire and Shakespeare, as Jeremy is? Because this is historical fiction, the author, as might be expected, introduces us to some actual historical figures as the actor David Garrick and the author/solicitor James Boswell. He makes them as real as the characters that he has created out of his imagination. And equally real is 18th Century London and Covent Garden, the stomping grounds of both Jeremy and his guardian. Although Jeremy is the narrator, we often are treated to Sir John's perspective of his surroundings. This is a particularly clever and entertaining "touch" on the part of the author, Bruce Alexander. Sir John can only perceive Covent Garden through his senses of sound and smell, and as is often the case with the blind, these senses are particularly well-developed to compensate for the loss of the other. ("You who have sight are often so wasteful of your other senses," Sir John remonstrates on one occasion). This make it all the easier for the reader to "hear" and "smell" what the characters do. Bruce Alexander brings 18th century London to life for his readers without, it should be noted, glossing over what a 21st century reader would regard as the faults from that era. The mystery itself, the puzzling death of Lord Goodhope in his study, moves along at a brisk pace, and I am giving this book 4 stars only because I felt that the climax, while entertaining, might have fallen just a little short of the expectations created by the rest of the novel. Still, it's a great read, and I highly recommend it for all age groups, regardless of the extent of their familiarity with Voltaire and Shakespeare.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible research blunders
Review: This is really a good book. I've read all the books in the series but this one is still my favorite. A great introduction to the characters and a wonderful look at London the the 1700s. The mystery which provides the basis for the story is also quite good. In the general vein of Agatha Christie with lots of interesting characters and enough clues that you think you have it figured out. Probably not. I suggest this to anyone who likes mysteries and if you also like history I suspect you'll find yourself reading the whole series as I did.
Rating:
Summary: The First in the Series
Review: This is really a good book. I've read all the books in the series but this one is still my favorite. A great introduction to the characters and a wonderful look at London the the 1700s. The mystery which provides the basis for the story is also quite good. In the general vein of Agatha Christie with lots of interesting characters and enough clues that you think you have it figured out. Probably not. I suggest this to anyone who likes mysteries and if you also like history I suspect you'll find yourself reading the whole series as I did.
Rating:
Summary: Great entertaining book
Review: This little piece, melts wonderfully action, history, action and an interesting portrait of London in the late 1700's. I've had a great time reading it, and it had the quality to let me waiting for more adventures of Sir John Fielding and Jeremy Proctor. A lot of thanks to the author.
Rating:
Summary: Sure to be a great series!
Review: Well developed characters, a feel for the period, and a darned good mystery have whetted my appetite for more Sir John Fielding Mysteries.
|
