Review: Escaping from Houdini

Escaping from Houdini by Kerri Maniscalco
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Last year, when I first started my bookstore job, one of the first ARCs I read was Kerri Maniscalco's second book, Hunting Prince Dracula. Now, almost a full year down the line, the time is almost here for Escaping from Houdini to hit shelves, and I got an ARC of this book at work just like I got for its predecessor.

Picking up very soon after where the second book left off, this one takes place almost entirely on an ocean liner, the RMS Etruria. It actually kinda continues a trend I've noticed with Maniscalco's novels - each one features a smaller, increasingly confined setting, the better to heighten the suspense each time. We've gone from the city of London to a distant Romanian college to, now, the most narrowly defined setting of them all. One can only wonder how much more confined the upcoming fourth and final book can be...but I digress. Here, though, it's got to be one of the most classically Holmesian stories yet, built around a magic show and thereby managing to put some of the most daring and impossible seemingly supernatural murders in this series on display. As a result, it plays out a little like Maniscalco applying her own spin to the circus fantasies of Caraval or Daughter of the Burning City - the latter, especially, because of the murder mystery element.

Though I'm a little disappointed that there's relatively little of Houdini in the story - and the title's a tad bit misleading too - I'm actually happy to report that Mephistopheles makes a very interesting magical showman in his own right. Audrey Rose and Thomas keep the story very strong too with their romance, arresting in how much they need each other but also have to try and maintain some sense of era-appropriate decorum. In public, that is. And once the crime is solved, let's just say, without spoilers, that Agatha Christie would approve of the subtle homage to one of her classics (unless I miss my guess.)

I'm hoping that next year, with the final book in the series, I'm able to get an ARC of that as well to complete my (admittedly incomplete since I never got one of the first book) cycle. And until then, I'll happily hand-sell all the books at work - once we get restocked, that is, because I got one coworker to buy our last copies of the first two recently. :)

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