Summary
Sally Lockhart's father dies under mysterious circumstances, and Sally, a rather unconventional Victorian girl who is more comfortable riding and shooting than she is drawing or sewing, sets out to discover what happened to him, after receiving a mysterious note in the mail. When her initial inquires about the contents of the note lead to a man dropping dead of a heart attack, Sally plunges in to the investigation. She gets help from her father's friend Major Marchbanks, Jim, a porter at her father's firm, and Fred and Rosa, a photographer and actress. As Sally chases opium addicts and murderers to find the answer to her personal mystery, she helps Fred build a business and takes control of her own life.
Citation
Pullman, P. (1985). The ruby in the smoke. New York, NY: Laurel-Leaf Books.
Impression
This is a perfect rainy day book--something melodramatic and full of opium dens, evil old women, and Victorian intrigue. Mrs. Holland is a wonderfully sneering villain--a little less nuanced than I usually prefer, but just right for this type of book. Pullman creates a perfect atmosphere--his London is just the right sort of seedy. I enjoyed this quite a bit-sometimes melodrama is just right.
Review
"Pullman's Victorian melodrama boasts a sufficiency of mystery, murder and hairbreadth escapes involving a big cast of honest and ignoble types. ``On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October 1872,'' the story begins, young Sally Lockhart is in London where she tries to find out the meaning of ``the Seven Blessings.'' The phrase appears in a message from her recently deceased father, drowned in the South China Sea. When a colleague of her father hears the words, he dies instantly of a heart attack. That event marks the start of crises that go on with no let-up in the colorful Dickensian tale. Sally's legacy, supposedly a fantastic ruby, is nowhere to be found. A gang of cutthroats pursue the girl and her loyal allies, as the story sweeps on to a resounding close."
(1987, January 23). [Review of the book The Ruby in the Smoke, by P. Pullman]. Publisher's Weekly. Retrieved from http://www.publishersweekly.com
"Set in 19th-century London, an echo of Collins' Moonstone--an orphaned 16-year-old unravels the mystery of her heritage and tracks down a fabulous Indian ruby, which has left murder and mayhem in its wake. Sally Lockhart is a competent, self-reliant heroine. She walks out on the oppressive relative who's been housing her, gets her lawyer to rearrange her investments to raise her meager income by 20 percent, and finds a new home and job with an attractive, talented, but unbusinesslike young photographer and his sister, using her precocious business acumen to rescue their floundering finances. Meanwhile, trying to decipher messages from her father, recently lost at sea in the Far East, she encounters mysterious Mr. Marchbanks, who gives her a long document, which is stolen before she can read it, and also various unsavory denizens of the East End, including villainous Mrs. Holland, who has trapped Matthew Bedwell, messenger from Lock, hart, by his addiction to opium. A whiff of opium smoke induces a vivid repetition of Sally's recurring nightmare, convincing her that it is actually memory; later, she deliberately breathes opium fumes in order to retrieve further pieces of the puzzle. After kidnappings and escapes, several murders, the finding and losing of the ruby and finding of a more moderate but useful inheritance hidden by Lockhart, everything is sorted out with surprisingly few loose ends, given the plot's many threads. An entertaining yarn, enlivened by humor and vivid characters, with the added historical interest of early photography and the evils of the opium trade. Sure to please readers of historical romances."[Review of the book The Ruby in the Smoke, by P. Pullman]. Kirkus. Retrieved from http://www.kirkusreviews.com
Uses
This is YA that should appeal to adults as well--put it in a display of crossover books.
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