I liked it; this was pleasantly old-fashioned, like something from the Golden Age of crime fiction. Lots of allusion to literature and arts, and the art was fine as well -- I like that style of drawing. The book is around 30 years old, and it shows, of course, but I felt that this added to the charm instead of distracting from it.

Full review to be posted soonish.

I would like to thank the publisher and netgalley for providing me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Visually Attractive…
A potted detective story laced with satire in graphic form with more than a nod to the Golden Age of Crime. Visually attractive with artwork that begs more than a second glance and an entertaining little tale which, perhaps, has lost out in translation.

I loved this! Quirky and very English although written by French authors. Tin Tin for grown-ups. More in translation, please!

A novel, set in 1950s. It was kind of blunt to me, maybe I don’t enjoy this kinda book. But the illustrations were so good.

Muito bem elaborado, com histórias intrigantes no melhor formato de investigação policial. Nas páginas iniciais há uma longa descrição de como as personagens se conhecem, que ,e desapontou um pouco por não ser na forma de quadrinhos. Entretanto as três histórias seguintes foram muito divertidas. A ilustração é linda e lembram tanto o cinema noir quanto os filmes de Sherlock Holmes.

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Very well done, with intriguing stories in the best police investigation format. In the opening pages there is a long description of how the characters meet, which ,and disappointed a bit because it was not in comic book form. However, the next three stories were a lot of fun. The illustration is beautiful and reminiscent of both film noir and the Sherlock Holmes movies.

I'm facing a conundrum to express what I felt.

Did I loved it? Um not entirely.
Was it a fun read? Undoubtedly.

I'm sure readers who admire and love british literature and mystery and vivid representations of past era, they'd definitely love it better. Troupes and stories was drastically different than what we are used to in Asia. In that sense I definitely appreciate the unique approach. And the art style was fairly good..

I'll be Going with 3.5 star

A graphic novel pet peeve of mine is relying too heavily on huge blocks of text, so I got a little frustrated with this collection (the font also irritated me a bit). That being said, there was a lot of genuine weirdness in the storytelling here that was fun and unexpected. An obvious pick for fans of Tintin and Agatha Christie, with stunning illustrations, particularly in the architectural/setting images.

3 stars

Detailed & colorful art & the setting in the 1950’s made these three short mysteries a fun read. The stories themselves aren’t particularly compelling or complex mysteries, & at times the plots get confusing.

[What I liked:]

•The first story, Seven Oaks, has an interesting premise. The ending is a bit messy though, & I wish it was a bit clearer what exactly happened & how.

•The art is wonderful! I especially like how detailed the panels of scenery & architecture are. The attention to detail, the costumes, the cars, the indoor interiors like Francis’s study, etc. are also beautifully detailed!

•There are some fun little nods to literary history, including references to Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, & Charles Dickens.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•The “introduction” of the book, Olivia’s recollections of her friendship with Francis, was a bit long & wordy although it is useful background information for the following trilogy of stories. I would have preferred if the character development happened during the three stories more organically, rather than being info dumped in the “introduction”.

•Also, despite writing the “introduction” to Francis’s life, Olivia doesn’t get to do much as a character, just worry about & support Francis while he investigates, which was disappointing to me.

•All three stories feel a bit shallow or rushed in the sense that the reader doesn’t get a chance to see the clues unfold & try to solve the mystery along with Francis. It’s basically the set-up, then the reveal in quick succession. I get that these are short stories, but their structure took some of the fun out of reading a mystery story.

•The first story (I think) I understood by the end, but the middle & last ones I’m not sure about. The middle one had some revenge plot perhaps? & a scam? But I’m not sure what the conclusion was, & it’s not clear if all the criminals got caught in the end. With the third, it was a cute story but really hard to swallow—while waiting for a phone call to explain a haunting family mystery, Francis somehow dreams the answers to his questions, & then doesn’t bother to confirm if his dream was accurate? Why have the dream in the first place?

CW: murder, attempted murder, mental illness, suicide, racism

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

I was really excited to read this - unfortunately in the end I just didn't enjoy the way the story flowed. I found there was too much exposition and it began too boring too son. A pity because on paper it had everything I normally enjoy!

This was interesting. I'm not sure quite what I expected when requesting a copy of this for review, but I was pleasantly surprised. I won't say that I enjoyed it as a work of detective fiction, which I think is what it is supposed to be, but as a work of art, it was quite lovely!

I can't say I was overly enamoured of the first, epistolary section of the book. This section was clearly direct exposition, but it seemed quite clumsily done in that it was quite ridiculous. The writer of the letters was writing to a dead friend, but seemed to be describing to him in great detail, matters, situations and events that he must have been perfectly conversant with, since he was a key player in all of them. This was obviously done to establish the background for the reader of what was to come, but it seemed quite a gauche means of doing so. As I was reading I kept thinking, 'why is she telling him all this - he knows it already'. The fact that he was dead at the time made it even worse! That being said, I will allow that the impression that these were real people rather than fictional characters was skilfully conveyed, with the interweaving of the names of real people from literature and theatre of the times.

The actual trilogy itself was visually stunning, but literarily somewhat disappointing. The ligne claire artwork was beautiful. I am a Londoner born and bred, and the scenes set in London were so wonderfully drawn that I was able to recognise the streets portrayed simply from the drawings, without needing any textual clues. The stories, however, left much to be desired. Perhaps much was lost in translation, but the plotlines made very little sense, and seemed to make vast leaps in pacing and logic, leaving one completely bewildered as the story unfolded, It was as though the writer had only a limited number of words in which to tell the story, so he accelerated the storyline in order to keep within his budget. There was a definite nod towards the Golden Age detective fiction stories such as those of Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie, et al, and the reader is quite clear about what the writers intended. However, the artist succeeded resoundingly, but the writer foundered.

I found this in the Read Now section of Netgalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I really have no idea what to make of this one. Three mysteries featuring the same amateur detective/writer (in the vein of all those golden age English sleuths) you'd think it would be a pretty straightforward read. It wasn't. I had a hard time figuring out what was actually going on and what was in the writer's imagination. Which, I guess,was sort of the point, but I found myself flipping back pages thinking, wait, what? It was interesting, and the mysteries were clever and well thought out, but the Saint Elsewhere style of storytelling isn't really for me.
I will say, though, the set-up was written so believably that I found myself looking up the characters, thinking, why haven't I heard of those authors before?!
The illustrations were perfect for the story, really hammering home that classic Golden Age feel. It was nicely detailed with some fun touches (like a passenger who looked a lot like Alfred Hitchcock).
It was an interesting read, and one that I feel like I should read a second time.

Albany & Sturgess is a French-Belgian comic book series by Jean-Claude Floc'h and François Rivière, The comics use the ligne claire style, also used by Hergé. I really enjoyed the artwork but I couldn't really get into the stories. It was a bit confusing and I wasn't quite sure who was who. I liked the fact that you get a good volume of well drawn comics, I just felt that the comic loses something in translation.

This was a strange journey.
The whole time I wasn't sure if it was weird, for weird's sake or actually weird with a purpose and deeply interesting.

It was certainly a unique approach to a story. It incorporated a lot of tropes that felt very purposeful, but I think this is definitely an acquired taste experience.

If you have a deep love of mysteries, British culture, and enjoy odd entertainment that likes to test the status quo (think Twin Peaks/Dale and Tucker vs the World) then you might enjoy this quirky graphic novel and story telling style.

***Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free eBook for a non-biased review.

This book was originally published in 1992 and it has very European sensibilities with twists and endings that seem odd to this American's sensibilities.
I was not expecting a graphic novel to start with so much text (it's a letter that takes up the first quarter of the book). However, it does set up the rest of the stories. It sets us up with a writer (Olivia Sturgess) and a literary critic (Francis Albany). While they were lovers at one point, they were better as friends. And the two get into some odd situations: some more believable than others. They include a fellow author who finds a book published years before but it contains all of his stories, a woman in black who is slowly killing off the people in Olivia's publisher's family, and Francis's memories of being on the Titanic.
This reminded me of the Golden Age of mysteries in the fact that it referenced the classics, in this case, classic mysteries of all genres. We either see on the page or hear mentioned Christie, Sayers, Allingham, Hitchcock and more.

Three stars
This book came out June 23rd, 2021
ARC kindly provided by Europe Comics and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

An amazing graphic novel consisting of three short mysteries! The book follows two fictitious characters in 1950s London; crime fiction novelist Olivia Sturgess, and her friend and literary critic Francis Albany. The first story is about a young author who finds that a book that has the exact plot as one of his books, but was published years before. This story was my favorite. People start to die just like how they're mentioned in the said book. The second story is about a mysterious woman in black who goes around scaring people, and ultimately kills Olivia's publisher. This story was the weakest for me as it was obvious who was the killer. The third story follows Francis as he dreams about his father's demise in the infamous Titanic and tries to piece together the details. If you like Agatha Christie mysteries, then this is the book for you. Agatha Christie even makes an appearance in this book (as herself)! The art style is awesome and the dialogue too.

A collection of short stories that is neither fish nor fowl - I've come away from it not really knowing 1) whether I enjoyed it, 2) whether "enjoyment" is really the purpose of this oddity, and 3) what is the author and artist up to with this? It's a sort of historical fiction mixed with what I'm guessing is a pastiche or homage to different types of English mysteries and thrillers in which logic and linear plot are not particularly important. Honestly, it reminds me of the British anthology movie Dead of Night but it makes less sense. Anyway, the artistic style is competent if not amazing but fits the tone of the fiction admirably. A recommend, sort of, for the strangeness of it all.

A collection of three stories based on detective Albany. It is full of suspence and a typical captivating detective story. Artwork is normal and cannot be called exceptional. But it sticks with the background of the work. Initial pages have bonus material in firm of experimental artwork based on detective. A good story which would be liked by thriller loving readers

The next time I need to portray my Rule of Foreign Books – that they get translated with the urgency they deserve – this will be the benchmark example. I found, eventually, that it dated from 1992 and is only now thought worthy of being put into English. It isn't. The first chunk is a turgid second-person letter to a dead person from the alleged crime author of the rest. The visuals are photographs to complete the obituary-styled report cum letter, but it's just of zero interest. After that we get three full-length ligne clair crime pieces, and the first alone was proof I was on a hiding to nothing. It starts favourably with a writer of the macabre finding a lost volume – that exactly mirrors his latest output. Not only that but it starts to come true in grizzly ways – only for it to collapse into a heap of an ending that makes no sense whatsoever.

Upon which I clearly found better things to do, like gloat in the truth of my Rule. Deny it and try this book at your peril.

The art work in this graphic trilogy is absolutely fantastic and the book is worth viewing for it aline.
But the stories are weak and flatly written.
Also, the book is very difficult to read on the NetGalley reader