The Traitor in the Tunnel Review

Title: The Traitor in the Tunnel

Author: Y.S. Lee

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Release Date: February 28th 2012
Received From: Netgalley

Summary:

Get steeped in suspense, romance, and high Victorian intrigue as Mary goes undercover at Buckingham Palace - and learns a startling secret at the Tower of London.
Queen Victoria has a little problem: there's a petty thief at work in Buckingham Palace. Charged with discretion, the Agency puts quick-witted Mary Quinn on the case, where she must pose as a domestic while fending off the attentions of a feckless Prince of Wales. But when the prince witnesses the murder of one of his friends in an opium den, the potential for scandal looms large. And Mary faces an even more unsettling possibility: the accused killer, a Chinese sailor imprisoned in the Tower of London, shares a name with her long-lost father. Meanwhile, engineer James Easton, Mary's onetime paramour, is at work shoring up the sewers beneath the palace, where an unexpected tunnel seems to be very much in use. Can Mary and James trust each other (and put their simmering feelings aside) long enough to solve the mystery and protect the Royal Family? Hoist on your waders for Mary's most personal case yet, where the stakes couldn't be higher - and she has everything to lose.

 

Review:

First of all if you haven't read this series and you even kind of like historical fiction or mystery. RUN don’t WALK to pick up the first two books before this one comes out on February 28th! Here is my review for the second book The Body at the Tower if you need more convincing.

 

The Traitor in the Tunnel is the third book in this series and trust me when I say I was DYING to read it. And while it was really, really good it wasn’t my favorite book of this series.

 

Mary as usual was strong, smart, and resourceful. These are some of my favorite qualities in a heroine which is one of the reasons I like these books so much.

 

James. Oh, James. I love James, but he was very different in this book than in the others and I don’t really know how I felt about that. Toward the end he started to act like the James I love and so I hope he will be the same in the next book.

 

There were a lot of twists in this story which I really appreciate in mysteries. I also liked how the case started off really tame and then became more sinister. Something that was really different from this book and the others was the fact that Mary got to dive deeper into her heritage which I really enjoyed.

 

Overall, not my favorite book of the series but I still definitely recommend it for any fans of historical fiction, mysteries, or just plain good books.