23 April 2012

The Lady Grace Mysteries: Assassin – Patricia Finney


It’s been a while since I’ve read any books so obviously aimed at children, however I work at a shop which sells second-hand ‘children’s’ items including children’s books.

We had a couple of sets of the Lady Grace Mysteries come through the shop in the space of a couple of days last summer. The covers are designed in a way which harks back to an old-fashioned library of leather-bound books. As such they appealed to me; it’s the kind of library I’ve always wanted. And for that more than for the content of the books I bought eight of them.

Assassin was the first of these 8 books, they are named alphabetically, and it was unsurprisingly about the assassination of one man by another man being blamed on a third man.

This book was unlike anything I’ve ever read. It is written from a child’s perspective and therefore it comes across as childish and in some respects petulant. It seems to have some historical inaccuracies, although it is not riddled with them, and they are acknowledged at the end of the book.

I thought that the plot was well set up and it was a story I enjoyed. However there were fictional elements in it which were left alone for too long. They should have been mentioned at least briefly earlier on and not left until the end as the crucial bit of evidence everything hung on. That is my only real criticism of the book and it exists because it made the book seem shallow in my opinion.

Rowen

2 comments:

  1. Hey, you left a comment on my blog but I was unable to reply via email because you're a no-reply blogger. Just fyi. It makes it more difficult for people to answer your questions. There are great tutorials out there for how to change that in your settings if you need help!
    As far as the piggy bank goes, I didn't see it online, I saw the finished piggy at the event I was volunteering at, but as far as I can tell it's just a 2-liter plastic bottle [like from soda, etc] that is covered in pink paper mache. The cap is painted pink for the nose. The feet and ears are made out of a craft foam, but I'm sure you could also make them out of cardboard painted pink or pink cardstock. Use hot glue gun to glue the feet, ears, and eyes on. Cut a slit in the back for the coins to go in. Make sure that you don't paint the nose while it's on the bottle, because that's how you get the coins out of the pig.

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    1. Thanks for letting me know about the no-reply thing, I didn't realise. And thanks for explaining how the piggy bank works as well. Sounds like it could be really fun.

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