L. C. TYLER – The Herring Seller’s Apprentice. Ethelred & Elsie #1. Pan Macmillan, UK, trade paperbark, 2007. Felony & Mayhem, US, trade paperback, April 2009.

   I reviewed The Herring in the Library, #3 in series, back in November. I liked it so much that I did something I don’t always manage to do. I found a copy of Ethelred and Elise’s first appearance and read it as well.

   From the earlier review, let me borrow the first paragraph and get the introductions out of the way first:

   “Ethelred is Ethelred Tressider, a second-rate if not third-rate mystery writer, while Elsie Thirkettle is his literary agent, for better or worse. Their relationship is a rocky one, at least from looking at it from the outside. Elsie is always putting him and his ambitions down, for example, in hilarious fashion, but if there was any animosity between them, why would she stick with him, through thick and thin, as they say, if there were?”

   Since The Herring Seller’s Apprentice is the true introduction to the characters, they haev’t settled into their roles as solidly as they were in Book #3. In fact, I’m not at all sure that Tyler was completely firm himself as to where future stories were going to go. (There are now eight of them.)

   Also what makes Book #1 rather different than the later one is that it’s Ethelred’s former wife who’s gone missing and is shortly thereafter declared dead. Although the police are suspicious of him, he has a solid alibi: he was in France at the time of the murder. He conducts his own investigate independently from the police, but Elsie thinks he’s acting strangely about it and begins her own.

   Hence the title. As a mystery writer Ethelred is the Herring Seller. Elsie is his Apprentice. When she takes over the narration, the font changes, a fact which is both helpful and unusual enough, perhaps, that she even points out the fact to the reader, a protocol not often found in other works of mystery fiction, old or new.

   A quote on the cover calls the book “A classic detective novel.” Well, yes and no. It follows the format of he traditional mystery story, but it pushes its boundaries every inch of the way. This is a statement that includes the ending, which concludes but yet does not end. I will have to read Book #2 in the series, Ten Little Herrings (2009) to see where Tyler takes his characters from here.

   This is a book you have to read carefully. I believe that every word that’s spoken was truthfully stated, including my own, and yet Tyler manages to have at least one big surprise up his sleeve. It’s also not as laugh-out-loud funny as Book #3 is, but the humor is there. That Ethelred is so closely involved may explain this one is a notch more serious in tone.

   That’s all for now. On to Book #2!