Mystery of the Metro by Elizabeth Howard Published by Random House Books on October 12, 1987
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Girls & Women, Young Adult Fiction / Historical / Europe, Young Adult Fiction / Mysteries & Detective Stories
Pages: 171
Format: Paperback
Source: Ebay
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
Meet PARIS Paris Mackenzie is a sixteen-year-old from Chicago with an irrepressible personality and a passion for Sherlock Holmes. When she visits her namesake city at the turn of the century, Paris finds all the glamour and romance she ever dreamed of. But the city’s glittering façade hides a dark underside, whose danger is like a magnet to the intrepid Paris, pulling her closer and closer to treachery, deceit . . . and even murder. MYSTERY OF THE METRO When her arrival coincides with the mysterious death of her uncle Claude, Paris decides she must bring his killer to justice and finds herself in a deadly game of hide-and-seek with a formidable opponent—the hypnotic, diabolical Madame Méduse.
Back when I was a young thing, many moons ago I know, I saw the cover for this book. I always wanted to read it, but I never did when I was growing up. There were books that I avoided to keep the peace growing up. I knew that they could be construed as “female” or “girl” books. I decided not to read it as a result. Now I am an adult and recently realized that I should totally read this finally. I was even more happy to find out it is a SERIES BOOK!
I purchased the series on EBAY on February 08, 2023. I intend to review all four books when I finish them. As this writing, I have finished 2 of the 4 books.
This first book establishes what appears going to be some of the elements of the series going forward. Paris and her personality, the main villainess of the series, and who will be in her life as friends or foes are some examples. The author setting this up though takes a lot of the first book. The mystery feels like it is a back burner element at times due to this establishing of these elements.
In this book, the mystery is revealed very early on in the book. Paris is visiting her uncle in yep you guessed it PARIS. When she arrives though, things have happened. This starts the book on its footing. Paris is a spunky character that is easy to identify with. She is well-established as who she is. She doesn’t always do what she is told by adults and wants to figure out what is going on regardless of the potential harm to herself. She is a character that I found myself drawn to, which helped to get over some of the weirder elements of having characters thrown at us or having moments were things were revealed to us but not to the main character due to reasons, even though she was literally there in the moment. It will make more sense if you read it. It was frustrating at times with the plot because I think we knew too much and the mystery element felt again like a back burner after thought element to establish the characters.
Near the end of the tale, when we get to the reveal type of stuff the author shines and drags us into what is happening. It was the part of the book that I can honestly state that when I finally arrived at it, I could not put the book down. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. The other parts of the book found me taking large breaks, sometimes days, to read. I was struggling to read this like 170+ page book. I wanted to say that it was because I hadn’t read a lot for a bit when I started reading this, but it was largely because there were parts that just did not engage with me, as a reader. I will not blame myself for this one. There was also an element that at the end I was like WHY WASN’T IT THE END OF THIS BOOK? To tease the next one? Again I won’t reveal what it was, but if you read this book you will probably have the same moment where it feels like a thread was abandoned, but when I closed the book I said to myself that I hope it is in the next one. This thought let me know that I would continue on with reading the rest of this series because even though I thought the plot was flawed, the characterization of Paris was done so well that I felt like I wanted to see where she goes on her journey in Paris next.
As mentioned above, this was book 1 in a 4 book series. The next book is called “The Mystery of the Magician”
Leave a Reply