Death in Delft by Graham Brack

November 19, 2021

Death in Delft by Graham Brack

When three girls from vastly different backgrounds go missing in the normally quiet city of Delft, only one body is found buried in a shallow grave. The archbishop sends Master Mercurius, a cleric from the university, to investigate. With the help of the artist Vermeer, Mercurius works to track down the killer before another child goes missing.

This is the first book in a new series, with a likeable protagonist, although even the negative characters are sympathetic. Mercurius has a secret of his own that he very much wants to keep hidden. He is a kindly, intelligent man. There is a good mixture of historical and fictitious characters. The artist Vermeer is a particularly good character, with his large family. I hope he appears in future books.

Vermeer's painting of Delft in the 17th century

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

September 12, 2019

Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

After her sister Sylvie goes missing, Amy questions family and friends to see if anyone knows where she is.  Although Amy has never been out of the state of New York, she travels to the Netherlands, Sylvie's last known location.  As her search continues, Amy begins to wonder if she really knows her sister at all.

I love me a domestic drama with lots of family secrets, also missing person stories, and even more, I love one told from various points of view.  This one ticked those boxes for me, but I still found the story disappointing.  I didn't like most of the characters because they weren't that well-developed or unique - the male characters were all creepy, and except for Grandma, the women characters were all shallow (Amy's first thought when she hears Sylvie is missing is who is going to pay off her student loans now).  There is drama and there are plot twists, but none of them were surprising or new.  Although it's described as a mystery, there's not a lot about it that's mysterious, and there are enough hints for the reader to catch on pretty quick about Sylvie's whereabouts.  I hope there is more plot and better characters in Kwok's next book.