Rivals in the City

Reviewed by: Brooke Faulkner - McArthur Public Library, Biddeford, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: August 6, 2015

Review

The clever fourth and final novel in Lee's series The AGENCY, about Mary Quinn, a young British woman in the Victorian era who in the first installment is rescued from the the gallows by two women who run a boarding school for young women that is the cloak for a covert organization of female spies. As RIVALS IN THE CITY opens, Mary and her love interest, James Easton, have newly opened a detective agency of their own and are engaged to be married. All of this must be put on hold, however, when a villain from their past emerges again as a threat and they sever ties in an effort to keep one another safe. Readers of the others in this series will find plenty to like here - Mary is a smart, strong character whose vulnerabilities are part of her strength and she continues to examine the nuances of her ethnic identity in this volume (she discovered earlier in the series that her father was Chinese). The romance between she and James, somewhat lessened in this final volume due to their purposeful avoidance of one another, is still filled with witty banter and an ever deepening respect for one another that keeps it fresh. Though the mystery's pacing loses steam in places, this conclusion should satisfy readers of the series, a must-read for fans of Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart mysteries.

Overall Book Score: very good