Caught Red-Handed

Servant of the Crown Mystery Series, Book 5

By: Denise Domning

Narrated by: Gildart Jackson

Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's Summary

The dead walk!

It's the time of year when the immortal army of the ancient king rides Watling Street and the dead become uneasy in their graves. Indeed, in the far north of Warwickshire, the villagers insist that one dead man returned to kill his only son. Now it's up to Sir Faucon de Ramis, the shire's new Crowner, to run the walking corpse to ground and put him back where he belongs.

©2019 Denise Domning (P)2020 Tantor

Really disappointed in this one

I very much enjoyed the first four in the series, and saved this last one for a treat. But it was like driving pleasantly down a country road, only to have the car suddenly yank the steering out of my hands, swerve off the road, head down a hillside, and crash into a tree.

(Spoilers ahead)
One of the things I liked about the first four was that Faucon solved his mysteries by thinking things through. Rational thought and real-world evidence were to the fore. But in this one we have what amounts to a Halloween tale about a ghostly army from hell, and we’re supposed to take it seriously. Not my cup of tea at all, and not what I signed up for. So I skipped to the end, to see if that would carry through—if it hadn’t , might have stuck with the book and finished it. But sure enough, there the army from hell is and the religious fanatic serial killer we’ve seen throughout the series rides off with them, presumably joining them in hell. Yuck. DNF.
Worse, apparently that serial killer was intersexed, which comes way too close to condemning sexual abnormality as inherently evil or inevitably leading to serious psychological pathology for my taste.
I had been kinda hoping Domning would continue the series, but now I don’t trust her as an author and will be wary of trying anything else she has written.
Will try to get my credit back.

Dreadful and disappointing

Was so looking forward to this book as really enjoyed the others but Zombies.... have you got a new teenage publisher.Not for me returned and got my credit back.

Silly and offensive -Contains spoiler

I found the first few books in this series intriguing but it feels like the author either got bored or no more were commissioned because after a rather forgettable plot about zombies (no really) the whole thing is tied up in about 10 minutes worth of business that could have come from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. More worrying is the identification of the villain as intersex. There’s no reasonable explanation for the villain’s madness except this and at no point is its ‘monstrousness ‘ countered by any character or the writer. This blatant transphobia left me feeling very disturbed. That this character could appear thus in 2020 is a disgrace to author and publisher both.