A Plague of Bogles by Catherine Jinks (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- A Plague of Bogles by Catherine Jinks
Bogle exterminator par excellence Albert Bunce (whom readers met in How to Catch a Bogle, BCCB 10/13) is called out of semi-retirement to grapple with a fresh string of child disappearances in the Newgate Prison area of Victorian London. He has a new apprentice, Jem, but as tragedies mount, he must also call upon the services of Ned and Birdie, his former helpmates who are now leading more stable lives. They take on bogles from drains and crypts and sewers, ventilation ducts and charity school larders, but not all monsters are preternatural: Jem also pursues his private agenda of taking revenge on Sarah Pickles, the villainess who once sold him for bogle bait. Jinks reprises her previous bogle-ish title with lots of action and an undercurrent of sly humor, supplying return readers with all the gory monster-vanquishing they have come to expect. Best of all, she lays the groundwork for a further entry, with one evil human on the loose and a government commission for the bogle hunters to form the covert Committee for the Regulation of Subterranean Anomalies. Sounds like another winner in the works.
