The Blood Card (Stephens & Mephisto Mystery, #3)

by Elly Griffiths

Monday, June 22, 2020

I went straight onto this after finishing Smoke & Mirrors, only being slightly derailed by the change of narrator. He’s made Edgar’s accent rougher than I felt it should be, but on the whole I think he was better at the range of voices required for an audiobook.

The plot here was distinctly ropey - it’s 1953 and there are Coronation upsetting schemes afoot. The scale of the book never seemed quite right, was it going to turn out to be a small murder mystery or an international anarchist conspiracy? Edgar gets a side trip to New York that seemed a bit strange and out of place. I didn’t feel it was adequately explained by the plot and I wondered what was being set up here. Nothing came of it in this book. I know from her other series that Elly Griffiths likes to have her side stories play out over multiple books so maybe something more will happen in the future. There is also an intrigue being set up with regards to Ruby and Emma, and I think I know what’s going to happen with those two but the characters were ignorant to it in this book.

The weakest in the series so far, but it’s got me invested in the characters and I’ll be onto the next book to find out what happens next all the same.