Slacks for Ella Funt

This is a fairly standard Victorian mystery/thriller. Taylor equips his book with the usual cast of characters: a crazy woman in the attic, a mysterious country house, a precocious chambermaid, etc. So many characters and plotlines that it took me a while to sort out who was who, especially because I was reading it in small chunks on the train. One section, set in a cabin in Canada, I never managed to connect with anything else in the book. It’s beginning to seem like these imitation-Victorian novels that have been coming out lately are more interested in getting the form right than in being very interesting to read.