Magic Outside the Box (Case Files of Henri Davenforth #3)
Published August 28th 2019 by Raconteur House LLC, Kindle Edition 209 pages
Henri is quite accustomed to dangerous and unusual cases landing in his lap. Being partnered to the Shinigami Detective likely has something to do with it. What he is NOT accustomed to is the queen herself marching into his lab and handing them such a case.
Former Royal Mage Joseph Burtchell was found dead in his home, all signs pointing to murder. However, it’s in question as to how the murderer accomplished the deed—the house was locked, the wards fully up, and the body bearing a peculiar wound.
It’s a locked room mystery, one with a suspiciously absent murder weapon and lack of suspects. Henri’s left baffled. Jamie’s excited, relishing the challenge the case represents.
Who’s powerful enough to thwart a royal mage’s wards and murder him undetected?
User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
This is a charming series about an American police detective dumped into another world, a world that’s like the Edwardian era plus magic.
If you can give the books their premise, they’re fun, sweet reads. The writing, however, increasingly seems slapdash and so it’s gotten harder for me to ignore how goofy the premise really is.
The books are structured as journal entries, primarily by a learned, fussy magician who is the American’s investigative partner, with occasional entries by the American, and with handwritten commentary added by one or the other of them, or by another magician.
Any complexity in world-building is solved by tossing word “magic” at it. Automobiles! Blackberries and cellphones! Motorcycles! These and other marvels can be produced and distributed almost immediately after the American describes to a tinkering magician how they work.
The author heavily lays down facts that turn out to be irrelevant to the solution of the case. They’re not really red herrings, they’re just highlighted facts that never get mentioned again. (For example, while trying to identify suspects, the detective interviews the man who threw a party the victim attended night before he was murdered. The man exclaims twice, and in great detail, that his wife — the cohost of the party — is out in the garden and too sad to talk to anyone. The detectives don’t talk to her, and she is never mentioned again.)
The magician partner’s journal entries show that he is developing romantic feelings for the American detective. This is obvious and everyone recognizes this — everyone, that is, except for the supposedly-observant detective who reads all the journal entries where the magician writes down all of his feelings.
And there’s sloppiness: The magician uses words like “thermos,” which is a genericized German trademark, not a common word that would spontaneously develop in some other universe. The author repeatedly uses “principal” for “principle,” and there are other, similar homonym mix-ups. She also says that waking up a royal magician is “a corporal punishment,” which made me want to quote Inigo Montoya.
And yet these are, as I said, charming books. The characters are likeable and loyal, and nothing awful happens to them, at least in the present. I don’t hate the books, I just have to keep wilfully disregarding how thrown-together they are.
Rating: really liked it
The story and characters just get better and better.
Overall rating - 5/5
Recommend book - definitively
Tags - mystery, police procedure, alternate world, magic, closed room, familiar, creating family, surviving, steampunk
Cliffhanger - none
Sex - none
Violence - some, not gory, not overly descriptive
Triggers - none
Rereading - first chance I get
Series - incomplete
Reading out of order - enough back ground info is given throughout the story that it could be read out of order and there are no significant spoilers for earlier books
Reading the next - as soon as it's written and available for sale, no pressure Honor.
Love the world building and characters. I wouldn't want to travel the way Jamie did but I would like to visit.
Love that the author has continued to have Jamie and Sherard make comments through out Henri's case files. The comments are in different writing styles for e-ink devices and in different colors for non black and white devices so that you can tell Henri (blue) vs Jamie (black) vs Sherard (green).
Recommend author - Yes, definitely. Honor Raconteur has become one of my auto-buys. Still working my way through Racontuer's backlist but I have enjoyed and re-read everything that I've purchased and/or borrowed through KU so far. Love that many of her series are complete. Currently re-reading Deepwords, Imagineers, and now the 3 Case File stories, ooh but the Fae Artifactor is trying to get my attention.
( Why change to a template rather than just writing out a review? I started thinking about what I'm looking for in a review, regardless of the review's rating, and wanted to make sure I was providing that information to a potential reader. I also tend to start a review and then get distracted by the next shiny book before I finish it, so this is my attempt to help me finish the review before moving on.)
cross posted goodreads, bookbub, amazon
Rating: really liked it
I love reading about Jamie and Henri!
Rating: really liked it
This is a highly enjoyable magical romp- it reminds me a little of the world created by C L Polk in her Kingston series.
Rating: really liked it
I love these books... I bought 1 -4 as dead tree back ups in case of digital apocalypse.
But did anyone else think that a few sentences between the chowder recipe and the reveal?
I mean my kindle version had no section saying when she lost her appetite or when some took her hand....
Rating: really liked it
good mystery well studiedin this book, the main characters solve it with logic, in a safe manner. ok, they get shot at, but they know why and can expect it enough to manage it. they don’t get saved at the last minute. Ross. they work it out the old fashioned way. it was a great mystery. a little too much relationship forwardish stuff. i love their new partner. and i swear sherard is gay. (it just works for him as a character. of course, i want even more fabulous clothing on him)
Rating: really liked it
3.5 stars.
Another solid installment of the series. I'm really enjoying the humour, banter, Earth references, clean content, and relationships between the main four characters.
Rating: really liked it
Love this story and charactersThe characters and story are wonderful. I'm loving this series. Can't wait to keep going. I keep finding paragraphs that I want to re-read. There are really sweet moments in this book that I love.
Rating: really liked it
I see why people complain about sloppy editing. Some typos, same laziness, and “erstwhile” doesn’t mean what the author thinks it means.
Still, something incredibly charming about this universe and the main characters work so well together.
Rating: really liked it
4.5 wonderful stars!!I was sooo anticipating this book and was not disappointed. The first third of the book was slightly slower paced than the first two installments, but the greater development of friendships and characters themselves made up for it in my opinion. I freaking love Henri!!! I want more Henri please! Great addition to my favorite series by this author. I would most definitely recommend this book to friends, family and random strangers.
Rating: really liked it
I have really enjoyed previous books in this series very much but this was a bit of a let down. The overall "possible" romance between Henri and Jamie goes nowhere in this story. There is only slightly more fleshing out of setting and world building. Our hero Henri comes across as a bit fussy and less appealing because of it. This is really a basic whodunit story and felt like filler to the series.
Rating: really liked it
Loved it!!!I loved this book!!! The world building is so good and the characters are so believable! Love the building relationship between Henri and Jamie and really love the interesting cases they solve!!!
Rating: really liked it
Can’t wait for the next book! This series is amazing.
Rating: really liked it
This series just keeps getting better. The characters are likable, the mysteries are complex without being overly complicated, and the solutions hang together exactly as they should. In this installment, a retired Royal Mage has been murdered and the Queen personally asks Jamie and Henri to investigate. Assisting are current Royal Mage Seaton, Jamie's protege Officer Brannigan, and her 'familiar' Felix -- an intelligent purple cat like creature. The case takes them out of Kingston for the first time.
Some have complained about sloppy writing and/or editing but there's clearly nothing that bothered me enough that I actually can recall it, let alone made me stop reading. I get a kick out of the 'margin notes' that one or the other of the characters leaves at the end (sometimes the beginning) of each chapter. Oh, and in the Kindle versions, at least, there's a different font style used depending on whether it's Henri or Jamie writing -- so there's not danger of being confused about point of view. A clever use of the technology, I think.
I do wish the author would include a map of Henri's world, which is, technologically, approximately equivalent to the 1920s, but with a more British/Victorian sense of "propriety". And magic of course. Anyway, I just find them extremely fun to read and relaxing.
Rating: really liked it
Another wonderful entry in this series. Jamie and Henri are back for another mystery, this time it's a road trip for a locked door murder mystery. Penny and Seaton and Clint all come along for support as well. The mystery and procedure of solving it were well done from my layman's viewpoint anyway. The characters are engaging and continuing to grow in fun ways. We had some excitement from some different areas this time - Jamie doesn't do something that causes her magical core to go out of whack in this book, which I appreciated.
The mystery kept me guessing as new clues came in and I appreciated that. There's some nice resolution to some drama that's been building back in Kingston as well.
The only thing that I wasn't so thrilled about was that it felt like Raconteur is trying to get Jamie and Henri into a romantic relationship and I think that kind of ruins their friendship a bit. But if that is indeed what she's doing, she's doing it slowly and low-key enough I can live with it.
Overall, loved it. Probably need to go re-read all three books now.
