Book review: The Devil's Daughters by Diana Bretherick (sequel to her award winning City Of Angels) by guest reviewer Gillean Somerville- Arjat

Release date 27th August 2015

In this sequel to Diana Bretherick’s award-winning debut, City of Devils, Dr James Murray returns to Turin in 1888 to resume working with the influential criminologist, Cesare Lombroso. 




He has just buried his disgraced father in Edinburgh and
carries a legacy of undisclosed guilt. His naive younger sister Lucy and her apparently dull and buttoned-up chaperone accompany him. James also hopes to renew his relationship with Sophia, Lombroso’s housekeeper, who has written begging his help to find a young female relative who has disappeared. Several girls have been disappearing in Turin,

farm workers and prostitutes, girls who might not be readily missed. When a body turns up in the grounds of an abandoned abbey showing signs of a Satanic ritual killing Lombroso and his assistants move in to investigate.

There is much to enjoy in this novel: secret passages, a locked garden, sinister grain pits, mummified monks, blood-curdling screams and a macabre denouement. However, I felt it could have benefited from some substantial editing. The atmosphere, tensions and dramatic revelations lose their impact in too much circumstantial meandering. Also the character of Lombroso himself irritates rather than enchants and the excerpts from his writings on female criminality at the beginning of each chapter, while not uninteresting in themselves, tend to distract from the flow of the story.

Available on kindle £9.49 or HB £20
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devils-Daughters-Diana-Bretherick-ebook/dp/B00TXH9GH4/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443961493&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=the+devil%27s+angels+diana+bretherick