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Ringing the Changes
Feb. 3rd, 2025 08:58 pmJuly 2023
Grave Suspicions – Alice James – Solaris, 2023
[Note: This book is written by a friend, so this is more an introduction than a review.]
The final volume in the Toni Windsor series (for now), this novel rings the changes by introducing a locked room murder mystery and an element of witchcraft. Our disaster-prone protagonist is called upon by her policeman brother Will to raise the corpse of Derowen Polkerris, an unpleasant cheese magnate found dead in his study after sacking his housemaid and arguing with his wife. All of his staff hated him so there is no shortage of suspects, but the man himself is annoyingly unhelpful about his demise, being more interested in the flavour of the crisps that Toni has brought with her. But she has no time for that, as she is immediately plunged back into vampire games, with a demand from Benedict the local leader to help a protégé of his, a young vampire called Nicky whose coterie has disappeared.
No prizes for guessing who Toni's next unsuitable love interest is. As with the other two books, there is almost too much plot, meaning that some established characters get short-changed (Bredon the presentable zombie especially - we may never find out why he is so different from the other zombies that Toni raises). It's also a pity that the inspired worldbuilding idea of vampire blood as an acknowledged cure-all has not been further developed. There are so many interesting possibilities - criminal gangs "farming" captured vampires, or vampiric super-soldiers, to name just two off the top of my head - but the constraints of the mystery-with-romance formula mean that none of them has been explored.
That said, the resolutions to the mysteries are particularly satisfying and help to develop the increasingly complex magical background. With the threatened return of an old enemy and the opening up of Toni's back story, there are clearly more adventures for her to have. Let’s hope that we get to read them one day.
