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Reviewed by:
  • Twelve Minutes to Midnight by Christopher Edge
  • Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor
Edge, Christopher. Twelve Minutes to Midnight. Whitman, 2014. [254p]. ISBN 978-0-8075-8133-9 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys    Ad Gr. 4–6.

The thrilling mysteries penned by Montgomery Finch are taking Victorian London by storm, and people are beginning to write to the recluse author, requesting his help in solving real-life mysteries of their own. There’s one major problem, though: Finch is just an actor playing a part, hired by thirteen-year-old Penelope Tredwell, the orphan heiress of the Penny Dreadful newspaper and the real talent behind the [End Page 402] paper’s popular mysteries. When a letter from the director of the Bedlam asylum invites Finch to solve a mystery, Penelope can’t resist the opportunity for some true sleuthing, bringing along “Uncle Monty” as a cover as she investigates why Bedlam’s patients all begin to scribble furiously at twelve minutes to midnight, rambling about iron birds, giant buildings, and mushroom clouds. Readers will catch on relatively quickly that the inmates are describing events from the modern era, but the mystery is still compelling, straddling the line between supernatural happenings and criminal goings-on, headed here by a wonderfully creepy femme fatale obsessed with spiders. Unfortunately, a dream sequence in the last few chapters moves the book jarringly from paranormal thriller to an almost meta-fantasy, and the ultimate solution of waking up a comatose, sleeping population of London by telling the sleepers to “fight back” against the future seen in their dreams seems oddly pointless, especially when the future in this case has indeed been written. Still, the descriptions of Victorian London are vivid without being overwhelming, and the storytelling has a direct, focused clip, making this a possible candidate for readers just delving into historical mysteries.

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