Death and the Arrow
The Tom Marlowe Mysteries
Chris Priestley

Transworld (Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-552-55475-8 (0552554758)
ISBN-13: 978-0-552-55475-6 (9780552554756)
Publication Date: June 2006
List Price: $9.99

Review: If you like an intriguing story, try reading Death and the Arrow by Chris Priestley and the first in its series. The book combines all of the features of an action book such as the Alex Rider series with a Sherlock Holmes type mystery. I am not a big fan of mystery books but this book held my interest because I did not know whether mystery or action was about to happen.

There has been another death and again, the murder victim has a death and arrow card in their pocket. This time the victim is one of London’s most notorious pickpockets named Will Piggot. Almost everybody in London is glad Will Piggot is dead. That is everybody except Tom Marlow, the apprentice news printer, and Dr. Harker, one of the town’s medical doctors. They were both friends of Will. In this story, they work together to find clues to solve Will’s murder. When Tom and Dr. Harker start finding out more about Will’s death, they become targets for death from the group of people who are involved with the death and the arrow cards. These friends of Will have to fight against this tribe to get information out of them regarding Will’s death. Read the story to find out if Will Piggot’s murderer will be brought to justice, or will Will’s murderer keep his reign of terror going.

Overall, I would recommend this book. The author did a good job describing the characters and the setting of the story. Like when the author said “only people that had stains of gold on their shirt came to the funeral. In particular one man had a dark green jacket stained gold pants and about 33 gold chains on his neck.” One of the things I did not like about the book was there were some details about characters that I did not feel were important to the story. Also, I felt that the beginning of most chapters built up too much suspense and it took too long for the action part of the story to occur.

This book deserves a four out of a five star rating because it has all the parts of a mystery along with action. I would recommend this book to people in fourth grade and older because it may have some challenging words younger age groups might not understand. There are two more books in the series and I am looking forward to reading them.

Review written by Kevin, Grade 6. Date of review: January 2010.

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