How to Catch a Bogle by Catherine Jinks (review)

Ten-year-old Birdie knows she's quite well off as poor Victorian orphans go. She's apprenticed to Mr. Bunce, an intelligent and kindly, if somewhat morose, bogler, a sort of supernatural exterminator ridding households and businesses of troublesome bogles that hide in the properties' deep recesses and eat children. With good training, steady nerves, and an exquisite singing voice, Birdie lures bogles into the salt circle where Mr. Bunce reduces them to slime and ash with a strike of a charmed spear. Their work schedule is humming along nicely when Miss Eames, a bluestocking who is researching the faerie realm, pays to accompany them on their rounds. Miss Eames' presence is a mixed blessing to Birdie and Bunce: the opinionated and annoying woman ultimately turns out to be a quick-thinking, life-saving force of nature when Birdie's kidnapped by nefarious necromancer Dr. Morton. Jinks subtext of the Victorian social themes—from the evils of child labor to the application of scientific thinking to host of unlikely problems—puts a smarter and funnier spin on preternatural shenanigans than a simple description of plot elements might suggest. The first entry in a planned trilogy, this title introduces a cast of secondary characters robust enough to expand the adventures in any direction Jinks chooses to wander.