Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

Reading the description, I was expecting kind of a gothic horror novel, maybe with a little mystery thrown in. And I did get some of that. It’s a story of a forensic scientist tracking down a child killer. Now, I have to say that this book was involving, if not entirely engrossing and there were a couple of chilling moments. However, it seemed to suffer from schizophrenia. At times, it was a mystery, at other times, historical fiction, at times, chick-lit. And I’m sorry, but the romance that Franklin tacks on is unnecessary, not believable and just downright annoying. It was a bit chicky for my taste but again, when it was concentrating on the basic plot of our protagonist trying to catch the killer, it was a very good read. Since most of you are women, I’m sure any of you would enjoy it even more than I did. So, to sum up, no, this was not a good book.