The Linking Rings (Eli Marks Mystery, #4)

by John Gaspard

Eli's trip to London with his uncle Harry quickly turns homicidal when the older magician finds himself accused of murder. A second slaying does little to take the spotlight off Harry. Instead it's clear someone is knocking off Harry's elderly peers in bizarrely effective ways. But who?

The odd gets odder when the prime suspect appears to be a bitter performer with a grudge...who committed suicide over thirty years before. While Eli struggles to prove his uncle's innocence--and keep them both alive--he finds himself embroiled in a battle of his own: a favorite magic routine of his has been ripped off by another hugely popular magician.

What began as a whirlwind vacation to London with girlfriend Megan turns into a fatal and larcenous trip into the dark heart of magic within the city's oldest magic society, The Magic Circle. No one does intriguing magic and page-turning humor like John Gaspard. Pick it up and see if you can be the first to figure out the trick!

• ISBN10: 1635112877
• ISBN13: 9781635112870
• Publish Date: 16 January 2018 (first published 13 December 2017)
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Imprint: Henery Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 250
• Language: English

Reviews

[kentholloway]

Okay, by now I’ve become a HUGE fan of John Gaspard and his Eli Marks series. I’ll admit, I’ve loved them all so far, but there was something about this one that truly hit all the right chords for me. By far, my very favorite book in this series. I’m not sure if it was the location (London), the great cast of characters, the plethora of suspects, or the motive for the murders, but this one completely hit it out of the park.

As for the mystery itself, I managed to figure out some of it. Some of it caught me by surprise, but as always, Gaspard made sure that all the necessary clues are sprinkled in throughout the story, which is a must for a great mystery.

Even better, the Eli Marks series doesn’t have to be read in any sort of order. So if you haven’t read one yet, you can easily start here and know why I’m raving so much about it. Just a completely satisfying read.

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Linking Rings is the 4th Eli Marks mystery by John Gaspard. I read it as a standalone and it worked very well. I intend to chase down the first three books in the series.

The 'hook' for the series is that the main characters are, and the action happens around, magicians and their performances. The main character, Eli, is a performer and co-owns a magic store with his famous uncle Harry, also a magician. Harry and Eli are off to London for a special set of performances at a famous magic venue, The Magic Circle. The performance schedule is upended when one of Uncle Harry's former cronies, Oskar, is literally stabbed in the back by a chair prop on their first night.

This is a traditional whodunnit. The characters are maybe a bit standard (the bumbler, the femme fatale, the lush, the womanizer, etc), but they're pretty well written and the book is a fun read. The dialogue is well written and the foreshadowing and clues are presented creatively and relatively subtly. One thing I really enjoyed a lot about this book was the humor. The main characters definitely don't take themselves too seriously and the dialogue is often sparkling and witty. I really liked the repartee and patter between Roy and his wife, Roxanne; they seemed to genuinely like one another (at least under the surface).

This is a clean mystery and the murders (though one of them is fairly horrific) are all written tamely and without graphic descriptions. The dialogue is also clean and except for an occasional 'hell' or 'damn' has nothing which will dismay readers.

I enjoyed it very much and recommend it to lovers of classic amateur sleuth fiction. One small caveat, the author writes at a couple of different points in the book that Eli's uncle Harry is being held because murder is 'a capital crime' in the UK. I thought at first that the book itself was set pre-1965 (the point at which capital punishment was abolished in Great Britain), but then the author talks about clearly modern landmarks like the London Eye. It's not a huge discrepancy and it doesn't have any overall effect on the plot, so it isn't going to be any sort of issue for the vast majority of readers.

I intend to find the first three books in the series, high praise from me.

Four stars, well written and entertaining.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.