The Mistress of the Art of Death

There used to be a time in my life when I read quite a few forensic style mysteries. This is the first I have read in a while - this title being a choice of our grown-up summer book club.

The year is 1170 and the place is Cambridgeshire, England. Children are disappearing, and the village is up in arms. Surely the town Jews are to blame. Child sacrifice is part of the culture afterall, isn't it?

King Henry needs to keep all elements of his kingdom in line. He needs the tax money from all areas, he needs peace. He tells his tax collector "Peace is money, Aaron, and money is peace." (p.10)

So how to solve these disappearances? Henry calls for one of the best detectives from Italy by way of his cousin, the King of Sicily. Simon of Naples is to come over to clear the name of the town Jews, and to find out what really happend. And to accompany him, a master in the art of death will come as well. This person is schooled in reading dead bodies for clues as to how they were killed. What Henry and Simon do not count on is that this person is a woman. Adelia is the child of professors and a student from the University of Solerno...one of the only places where a woman is allowed an education.

How will she fare in medieval England where the Church rules as well as the King, and women with knowledge are oft accused of witchcraft? And what will happen to those accused when the children start surfacing -- their bodies obviously violated before death in numerous ways?

Ariana Franklin has written quite the page turner. And, I have to say it ... eeewww! Lots of detail that I would have done quite well without. Mind you, the detail is not over-the-top in a gore for the sake of it way. It certainly ties in with the plot. But what made this title so readable for me, were the characters and their development. Adelia herself is complicated, smart, and torn. Little Ulf is utterly charming in his own messy way, as is his grandmother Glytha.

The reader also gets a real sense of the racism, religious fervor, and overall danger of the times. Unless you were a catholic, white man, your very existence could be wiped out with very little consequence.

While this title didn't capture me as much as last summer's The Historian, I did learn quite a bit about the time period, and it has spurred me on to want to read some non-fiction about the times.

Gilda Joyce Psychic Investigator

Eighth-grader Gilda lives in Michigan with her mom and brother Stephen. It is the end of the school year and everyone in her class is talking about the trips they are going on and camps they are going to over the summer. Gilda is not paying attention. Instead she is reading her favourite book : The Master Psychic's Handbook, by Balthazar Frobenius. When her teacher asks Gilda what she is going to do for the summer she blurts out that she is going to California to write a novel. This is not exactly the truth. But if Gilda is anything, she is relentless. And before you know it, Gilda gets herself invited to San Fran to stay with her mother's distant cousin Lester and his daughter Juliet.

The Splinter household is very different from Gilda's home. The huge museum-like house is devoid of anything personal, and Lester and Juliet keep to separate wings. The tower in the back is all boarded up. Gilda soon learns this is because Juliet's Aunt Melanie had committed suicide from the tower 10 years earlier.

Gilda is bound and determined to solve the mystery of the boarded up tower, and figure out why Lester refuses to talk about anything. With the help of Balthazar Frobenius, some disguises, and her cousin Juliet Gilda uses her talents as a psychic investigator to do more than just solve mysteries!

This book is appealing on so many levels, yet truly hard to describe. Gilda's character seems so young, but the topics of suicide and depression are sophisticated and give the story more of a YA feel. I really liked Gilda and admired her spunk, and Juliet is intriguing in her teen angst. Some plot points of the ghost story within are scary, then the reader finds herself laughing on the next page.

I think that Jennifer Allison has done an amazing job writing an entertaining and intriguing story. I would recommend this to readers from 7th - 9th grade.