M L Dunn

The following review is for The Transylvania Flying Squad Of Detectives, by M.L. Dunn. The copy I read was provided by either the author or the publisher free of charge through the GoodReads FirstReads program. I have not been, nor will I be, compensated in any manner by the publisher, author, GoodReads, or anyone affiliated with any of these people or entities for my review.

Since I like to give good news first, let us start with the good points of this book. I liked it. I really liked it a lot. For the most part, the story and plot move along swiftly with mostly believable characters, most of whom have a good sense of depth to them. The book was written in the style I like best: just enough description for my imagination to take over without being verbose or flowery or, heavens forbid, Dickensian in nature. The book starts with Tom, our leading character, dying in WWII and winding up in Britannia (Purgatory) for his next life. He is met by Mr. Jordan, who is tasked with routing incoming residents to where they can fit in the best and do the work they do the best. Tom is a bit of a perplexing person to place as he's from the United States, and people from the U.S. normally wind up in the New Amsterdam Realm. After a bit of discussion, a change of clothes, and a last-minute impulsive decision on Tom's part, Tom decides to go to Transylvania City and join their police force there as a detective (hence the name The Transylvania Flying Squad of Detectives, and no, the detectives do not get to fly). On the way to Transylvania City, Tom meets up with another recruit, Mike Horne, who also died fighting in WWII and arrived in Britannia that very day as well. Tom and Mike get along just fine on the train ride into Transylvania City, where things start to get very weird, very quickly. Once in Transylvania City, we meet a decent cast of characters, including vampires, werewolves, rock trolls, gremlins, goblins, witches, and the like. We even meet who turns out to be the ultimate villain in the book, we just don't know it yet. The story continues to flow at a decent pace, gradually speeding up towards the end where by the last 20 pages or so, I had the book grasped tightly in both hands, words mere inches from my face so as to see them better, and reading just as fast as I could to find out what happened next, how Tom got out of each jam he found himself in (and he found himself in an almost implausible number of jams to get out of at the end).

I'll bet you're wondering, if I liked the book so much and found it so engrossing, especially at the end, why did I give such a low star rating (originally only 3). The reason for that is two-fold. First, I thought the beginning of the book could have been done better. The author spends an entire prologue on this story Tom heard while he was in training about how the Germans tried to turn a captured Allied pilot into a double agent by using the pilot's amnesia to concoct this entire story about how he was really a German spy and had infiltrated the RAF two years earlier. This was a good premise, and the author frequently had Tom remembering back to the lecture about this pilot, but then he only uses it for maybe 2 pages at the beginning of the first chapter. He really could have done something with that premise and not had Tom believing Mr. Jordan quite so quickly about being in Purgatory. But the author didn't. He set up this wonderful premise, and then he didn't use it to it's fullest extent. The other reason I gave such a low star rating was because of the constant errors in the book. I hope the copy I received was an uncorrected proof copy (the book doesn't indicate whether it's an ARC or not) because the grammatical errors, typos, missing words, added words, sentences that just didn't make any sense, misspellings, and poor editing plague the book and almost bring it to its knees. I would expect in a novel this size for there to be no more than one, maybe two, if I'm feeling generous, errors for the whole book. Unfortunately, there was an average of one to two errors per chapter! Errors of this sort really interfere with the enjoyable reading of a book because just as you're really getting into the story, I mean really into it--disbelief has been suspended--you're jarred back into the real word by a sentence that makes no sense, a typo, a punctuation error that changes the meaning of what you're reading, a missing word, and extra word, or just plain poor grammar. Now, again, hopefully my copy is an uncorrected proof copy, and hopefully these errors are corrected in the copies that are available for sale, because The Transylvania Flying Squad of Detectives is a fun read that deserves better than to have its readers turned off by all the lazy errors. Those are the two reasons I rated this book so low. If someone can prove to me that the errors are corrected in the sale copies I will very happily add a star to my rating.

So, basically, if you can handle the errors without them disrupting your reading flow too badly, you like detective/mystery stories, and you like a lot of weird sprinkled around your books, The Transylvania Flying Squad of Detectives is for you. And maybe you can be the one to tell me why the detectives don't fly if they're a flying squad of detectives.

5/2/13 ETA: I received a nice message from the author today. It seems he is working diligently to take care of the grammatical, spelling, and other technical errors I was complaining of. He also hinted at a change near the end that would bring the tale from the beginning full circle and make it more relevant to the story. I won't say what as that would be too much of a spoiler. Ordinarily, I'd wait to see the changes made first before upgrading my rating, but honestly, I loved the story and I want it to be rated higher than three stars, so I've gone ahead and upgraded it to four stars. So, I'd say get the next edition of the book, because once the problems are fixed, it's going to be great!… (altro)