For fans of: Juliet Blackwell, Donna Andrews, and Madelyn Alt
Clothing designer, fashionista, and Vintage Magic proprietress Madeira “Maddie” Cutler loves her job; what could be better than spending your days surrounded by (and clad in) classic Coco Chanel and Ralph Lauren? Granted, thanks to her psychic abilities, she sometimes gets more than she bargains for when she acquires a new treasure – having visions of an object’s past can be a bit disorienting when you aren’t expecting it – but most days, her chosen career path suits her just fine.
Things take a turn for the complicated, however, when Maddie shows up at the train station to pick up her new intern, Isobel, only to find the young woman dead on arrival. Or so she and the police think, anyway – until someone claiming to be Isobel shows up at Maddie’s doorstep later that night. Who is the real Isobel? Why would someone try to steal her identity? Who killed the girl at the train station, and why? Can Maggie trust her new employee, or will doing so only serve to endanger her own life and the lives of those she loves?
Skirting the Grave is the fourth of author Annette Blair’s Vintage Magic Mysteries. There are some series where you can skip the debut, pick up the fourth installment, and have little difficulty understanding what’s going on. This is not one of those series. For the first 50 or so pages of Skirting the Grave, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. The opening features a slew of oblique references to Big Events that took place in previous books and is populated almost entirely by series regulars to whom you receive almost no introduction. I set down the book at the end of Chapter Six feeling confused, disoriented, and not just a little overwhelmed.
I picked the book back up again the next day, however, and am very happy that I did. Blair finds her flow about 80 pages in (with the introduction of Isobel), and spends the remainder of her tale crafting a clever and intricately layered mystery reminiscent of a golden era pulp novel. Carhops, drunken louts, wealthy heiresses, mistaken identities, and illegitimate children – Skirting the Grave has it all. Blair’s finale is a bit convoluted and far-fetched, but her story hangs together quite well overall and the solution to her central puzzle is most satisfying.
I’m not wild about Blair’s narrative style, which has kind of a manic feel to it, and her dialogue is unnatural, like everyone’s trying too hard. This is especially true with regard to Maddie’s English professor father, who seems unable to go a scene without quoting a famous author or two, and Maddie, herself, whose habit of uttering vintage clothing terms instead of curse words gets to be a bit much. (Scrap silk and little bone buttons? Really?) Her prose generally has good flow, though, and is flavored with a healthy dose of wit and snark, which makes it easier to ignore the book’s quirks.
Maddie makes for a unique, intriguing, and likable main character, but while Blair does a good job making her series heroine feel three-dimensional and fully fleshed, the same can’t be said for the book’s supporting cast. That’s not to say that the other characters aren’t compelling; on-again-off-again boyfriend Nick and boyfriend-wannabe Werner add humor and sizzle to the story, while Isobel is simultaneously charming and mysterious. But none of the people with whom Maddie shares the page quite have the texture and depth needed to make them ring true. It’s possible I wouldn’t feel this way if I’d read the other books in the series – Skirting the Grave isn’t meant to be a stand-alone novel, after all – but for this one story, at least, I was left wanting for a little more character development.
~ Kat |