The Blood Doctor is an absolutely fine mystery, but it's not her best work. That distinction goes to (imho) A Dark-Adapted Eye, probably one of the best mysteries ever written and certainly the favorite of my British Mystery collection. I enjoy settling down with a novel by this author and watching all the secrets unfold within its covers. I thought this one was really good, as well, but I kind of figured out the basic secret some time into the book. Luckily while I had the "whys" figured out, I didn't understand the "how." Usually if I get the solution early on I never read that author again, because obviously, it's not challenging enough. But I digress.Martin Nanther is the 4th Lord Nanther, and is currently working on a biography of his great-grandfather, Henry Alexander Nanther, the 1st Lord Nanther. Henry came by his title by way of serving as one of the personal physicians to Queen Victoria & her children; mainly because he was becoming quite well known as an expert in the field of hemophilia, a disease which Queen Victoria passed to her children. Well, at least to her son; some of her daughters became carriers of the disease.Martin has several notebooks written by Henry along with other documents & letters as source material. He also has a cousin who is currently working up his own family's geneaology, complete with family tree with references Martin can use. Then there are the cousins, children or grandchildren of Henry's 4 daughters, who all, in their own way, help Martin with his task. However, Martin begins to uncover things that reveal that there was something not exactly kosher about Henry. As he finds out more, Martin feels drawn to get to the root of the several mysteries involving his great-grandfather.The author does such a good job with Martin's search for family history; I love the way she slowly unwinds layer and after layer of Henry's story until she gets to the very core. But that is Vine's strength in story telling and she is at the top of her game here. I also enjoyed the look at the Victorian period. What bothered me about this book is the long, drawn-out descriptions of what it's like to be a member of the House of Lords...down to the pegs on the walls with the names over them, the color of the carpet in the Prince's chamber, what they eat in the dining room, etc etc etc ad nauseum. I read a brief interview with the author who is herself a Peer; perhaps this is why we had to go through all of this. In her other books, she locks you right into the mystery and doesn't allow you to become a) bogged down in details or b) sidetracked to the point where you're skimming.All in all, it's a VERY interesting few hours of reading with a mystery that you'll find yourself wanting to get to the root of just to satisfy your own curiousity & ease the suspense you're starting to feel. I recommend it to those who like British Mysteries or to fans of Vine's other books.
I loved The Minotaur by Vine, and though I never read A Dark Adapted Eye, I fell in love with the BBC version starring Helena Bonham Carter. These novels are more "whydunits" as opposed to 'whodunits", and it's definitely the characters and their motivations which drives the plot.I had high hopes for this novel and let me say that it's certainly not bad. Her writing is definitely not for short attention spans or people who like everything all at once -- you have to wait for details, revelations and so forth.However, unlike The Minotaur, this one was a bit too easy for me to figure out. I had guessed the Doctor's great secret very early on, knew his motivations, so that when the big reveal happened at the end, it wasn't nearly as satisfying. It also made the narrator's wonderings and fumblings a bit painful to read, when I thought the answer was fairly obvious. There is a very interesting theme tying the book together, indeed -- blood, which was also a synonym for genetics back in Victorian times. How much importance was placed on genes/blood, 'blue blood', certain families were thought to be better destined to rule countries, all the while if a royal member could pass a disease on to other houses in Europe (such as the hemophilia that started with Queen Victoria and ended up over in Russia, in the last tsar's family). There's also the issue of family, and how much we love our own blood, the desire to have children, which is very much present in the narrator's life.I was a bit mystified at the end as to the doctor's motivation -- did he think that he could control the circumstances? He must have, though he turned out sadly to be very wrong.All in all a page turner but not as gripping as other novels.
What do You think about The Blood Doctor (2002)?
Vine seems to have changed her tune a bit over the years since she parted company with her alter ego Ruth Rendell. I'm not finding her books as spookily creepy these days but they are still very good. In fact I think this is probably my favourite story of hers. Blood is the overarching theme of this novel in several ways. The narrator Martin Nanther, 4th Lord Nanther is losing his heriditary seat in the House of Lords reforms. He's also writing the biography of his great grandfather Henry, the 1st Lord Nanther who was a doctor specialising in diseases of the blood especially haemophilia. Henry received his baronetcy from Victoria, he was one of the royal physicans. The biographical research involves searching out his blood relatives from his family tree. His wife Jude is also suffering from miscarriage after miscarriage. Occassionally I found the continual theme of blood a bit icky and would have preferred that they'd stuck with describing things through the means of genes rather than the nineteenth century descriptions of blood but it's not that sqeamish a book. As with the last Vine I read (The Brimstone Wedding) I thought that there was scarcely any mystery here, Martin might not see what's going on but it's pretty obvious to the reader. There's a huge cast of occassional characters and the family trees in the front of the book help to keep them straight. I thought Vine did a good job of making the book so populated and yet tractable. Personally I found the story fascinating, the plot's long and tangled but not opaque and the mostly present tense writing isn't obtrusive as it sometimes can be (it took me a long time to even notice it). Definitely a really good book but one so out of genre that I'd hesitate to recommend it.
—Kirsty Darbyshire
I enjoyed the first half of the book, where Martin was investigating his ancestor, but once I had the end figured out, I wanted more. I was sucked in at first, but once I felt like I know more than the characters (duh, the kid has hemophilia), it was hard to keep going. I was also frustrated with the fact that Martin felt like he couldn't be honest with his wife about not wanting a baby -- he was going to be unhappy either way.
—Judine
Really terrific book. It took me a little while to get into b/c the narrator is a biographer doing a lot of family tree research so a lot of names and relationships right off the bat, plus he's in the House of Lords so a lot of parlimentary procedure right off the bat, but once i got into it, i really could not put it down. BV (RR) has a way of sucking you into a story or several stories at the same time and this is her most complex and best yet. Utterly fascinating and compelling. The very ending seemed a bit anticlimactic to me until I realized the full impact of what had happened. Great!
—Mark
