The Affair of the Wooden Boy - Ian Doyle

Bill Crider posted about this new e-book yesterday, and all I can do is echo his comments: it’s a fast-paced, very entertaining Victorian mystery set in an alternate London (here called Drummond) where magic works and all sorts of supernatural creatures live. The detectives are an appealing husband-and-wife pair of occult investigators, James and Mina Stark (Mina narrates the story) who are drawn into a dangerous case when a walking, talking wooden puppet in the shape of a small boy shows up on their doorstep. There’s a nice twist late in the book that took me by surprise, and I always like it when that happens.


This isn’t a totally unbiased review, since the author, “Ian Doyle”, is really our Rancho Diablo buddy Mel Odom, but I promise you, if I didn’t like the book, I wouldn’t post about it here in the first place. I had a fine time reading THE AFFAIR OF THE WOODEN BOY, and I suspect most of you would, too. It’s available on Amazon for the Kindle at a very reasonable price.