The mystery is only a small part of the story. The relationship between Carradine and Natalie and Claire takes up a lot of space, so that reads more like a romance.

*Many thanks to the Author, Sapere Books and Netgalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
I did not read Book 1 with Inspector John Joseph Lintott, but Book 2 was a disapointment to me. Victorian mysteries are my cup of tea, unfortunately this one turned out to be rather boring and the mystery itself not a real mystery till the end. This book is on the verge of a romance and I did not feel comfortable with it.

John Joseph Lintott is a retired Scotland Yard detective. He is approached by Nicholas Carradine to discover the truth about his little sister’s death 20 years previously.

This is billed as a Victorian mystery. As the action starts in 1902 it is actually Edwardian – a tiny detail but it did irritate me.

This book started well and I did enjoy it. However, I did feel that it went down hill about half way through. It is hard to analyse what exactly went wrong but the style of the writing seemed to change. The book had started as a good, solid detective story mainly full of facts with only a small amoutn of fluffiness. However, once the characters embarked on a trip to France there seemed to be much more “padding” in the story. There was a lot of fantasy thoughts from the character – Nicholas Carradine and the french ladies he meets in Paris. There is, quite frankly, a lot of waffle which was unnecessary to the story. I got the impression that the author felt the book wasn’t going to be long enough so padded it out. This made the book quite tedious to read as I needed to plough through it to get to the facts.

I liked Lintott. A down to earth Londoner who has his first trip abroad. He likes his family and home and is set in his ways – women’s sufferage is incomprehensible to him. He does, however, seem to glean a tremendous amount from body language from the French people he meets! Nicholas Carradine is a bit of an airy fairy character with strange ideas. There is a lot of padding around his character – his paintings & his relationship with the French ladies – that I found it hard to really get a grasp on who he was. One minute he is sleepless because he wants to know what happened to his sister, then suddenly he has fallen in love and no longer cares. Most odd.

When you look at the nitty gritty of this book it wasn’t too bad. The basic story is reasonable though quite predictable. It is all the padding out of the story which made it incomprehensible in places and dragged it down. I won’t be seeking out any further books in this series.

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

The Painted Face is written well and has interesting characters. The storyline was just lacking or something seemed to be missing to keep my interp.

Historical mystery set mostly in France. A thorough,rugged detective who plods on in a strange world to solve the mystery.

This is a hard one for me to review. It’s the second in a series, which I did not know. I feel like that is imperative knowledge. So please keep that in mind. That being said, I didn’t understand much of the backstory having not read the first in the series. Oh well.

This was OK. It's a light read (little depth), and it tries to be a romance novel with some mystery. There's nothing special here, and readers may have to work extra hard to suspend the disbelief (or go in with a pretty open mind). The female leads are the best written characters. If you like Victorian novels you might connect with this one, but I suspect it will not be a fave.

I really appreciate the free copy for review!

Even if this is not a boring or badly written book it was not my cup of tea.
I found hard to get involved and I found the plot a bit confusing.
Many thanks to Sapere Books and Netgalley for this ARC. I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, all opinions are mine