Book Review – Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish by Andrew Buckley
Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish by Andrew Buckley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A little mixed on this one. on the plus side I enjoyed the inventive nature of the story and it made me laugh in places. So it could have been a four or five star read. The story is engaging and has clearly been crafted. I could go with the necessary suspension of disbelief for the core plot elements of the eponymous Death, the Devil and the Goldfish. These were good as well as the robot elves and the other characters. In fact that whole bit was fab.
The bit I had some issues with was an easy fix. Ostensibly the book is mostly set in London, and I live and work in the area covered. However the book uses rather a lot of North American terms that just aren’t appropriate for the setting. Some examples are the main character is a police detective. He consistently introduces himself as Detective Reinhardt and talks about his Captain. A real met police detective would call himself DC (or Detective Constable) X and would talk about the DCI (Detective Chief Inspector)
If you aren’t familiar with London then I would expect you’ll find this a fantastic five star read. You can also hear it being read out loud on Andrew’s Read Around the World youtube channel.
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