Dead Politician Society - Robin Spano

After the mayor falls down dead in the middle of a speech, a clandestine student society claims credit for his demise. Claire Vengel is given her first undercover assignment: to pose as a student and penetrate the society. A streetwise amateur mechanic, Clare finds university a foreign land, and she has trouble creating an in with the suspects. She quickly alienates a popular professor and loses the respect of police superiors. When another politician is killed, Clare kicks herself into high gear. She forges friendships with students and makes inroads into the secret society. As the body count rises, Clare realizes that the murderer she has to unmask is someone she has come to consider a friend. She only hopes that the friend doesn't unmask her first.

I received Dead Politician Society through the Goodreads First Reads program. The book was released in hardcover on September 1 of this year, and is to my knowledge Robin Spano's first novel.

Clare, the main character in Dead Politician Society, is a highly immature young woman who behaves irresponsibly throughout most of the novel. However, it is entertaining to read about her many mishaps and attempts to impress her superiors. While Spano's writing is not particularly stylistically impressive, I enjoyed reading the book and the plot twists kept me reading. The characters were neither completely flat nor well fleshed out, but somewhere in between. Likewise, the plot was not completely unoriginal, but neither was it particularly fresh and new. As a whole, the book is clearly a first novel, and met my expectations as such. While I wouldn't rush out to buy the next Claire Vengel novel (I assume from the cover that there will be more), I would probably pick it up at the library, and I would look forward to seeing Spano improve her craft.

Seventy-Seven Clocks - Christopher Fowler

Seventy-Seven Clocks continues the Bryant and May books, a series of mystery novels that are centered around odd couple John May and Arthur Bryant, detectives working in London's Peculiar Crimes Unit. Responsible for solving crimes that don't fit in the range of the normal police, the PCU is faced this time with rat poison, an exploding suspect, a secret society, and (oddly) Gilbert and Sullivan operas. People are dying right and left, and Bryant and May have no suspect.

Seventy-Seven Clocks is the third book in the series, the first two being The Water Room and Full Dark House. That said, I have read neither of those two - in fact, the only other Bryant and May mystery I've read is Ten Second Staircase, the fourth book. This has so far presented me with no difficulty in understanding or enjoying the book, and I would encourage readers to go through the books in whatever order they please.

While the Bryant and May books are mystery/thriller novels, they are also very humorous. John May and Arthur Bryant have very different personalities and eccentricities, and yet manage to work together in a manner that is both effective and fun to read. The plot of Seventy-Seven Clocks is unexpected and original, at least in my experience, and kept me guessing all the way through. Sergeant Janet Longbright, who also works in the PCU, is one of my favorite characters in both of the books, though I'm not sure why, but all of the characters are well-written. If in search of a good mystery novel that's not terribly dark, I would definitely recommend that you read Seventy-Seven Clocks.