Book Review: Never Trust a Dead Man
Rated by 1 member
What Parents Should Know
The author has a decidedly dark sense of humor. The scene
where Selwyn is left to die in a tomb filled with decaying
corpses, though leavened with that humor, may still be a bit
much for some young readers.
Common Sense Media Review
Selwyn may be the protagonist, but it's Farold (and Elswyth,
when she's around) who holds the reader's attention. Selwyn is
just the straight-man to Farold's delightful combination of
petulance, snide sarcasm, whiny self-centeredness, deviousness,
and good sense, all coming out of the mouth of a bat (and later
a goldfinch, and then a duck).
Vande Velde has taken a classic mystery (red herrings, multiple suspects, a man wrongly accused) and added a touch of magic, a bit of the supernatural, and a dark sense of humor. The result is the author's specialty -- lightweight fun from start to finish. The mystery is nicely balanced to provide clues without being too predictable, and when the mystery slows, the humor fills in to keep things humming along.
From the Book:
The village of Penryth was too small to have its own
priest and depended on the occasional wandering friar to bless
weddings, babies, and the dead. But to leave an unblessed body
unburied by nightfall -- especially the body of a murdered man
-- was asking for trouble. No matter what the church said, the
people knew there were night spirits eager to make a vacant
body their own. Farold needed to be buried soon.
That was how they got the idea to solve two problems at once: "We will go up to the hills," Bowden proclaimed in his best official voice, which Selwyn had always thought sounded as though he had a pain in his lungs. "We will go to the burial caves, and there we will seal the dead victim in the tomb with his living murderer -- Farold and Selwyn together."
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