Book Summary: Ruby in the Smoke centers around a young lady, Sally Lockhart, whose father has died while on a trip to the East to investigate irregularities in his shipping business. Presented with a mysterious note warning of “the Seven Blessings,” the mere mention of which gives one of the other men involved with her father’s business a fatal heart attack, Sally struggles to fend for herself now that she is without father or mother, while trying to solve the mystery that got her father killed.
Slowly Sally learns that there are intertwining mysteries at play, one, the opium smuggling that was the cause of her father’s death, and a stolen ruby from India that is somehow hers, hidden by a friend of her father’s and pursued by an old criminal who will stop at nothing to have it.
Impressions: I really didn’t like this book, but if I am being honest a large part of that is I went in expecting a mystery – one I could solve if I was good enough and paid attention – and instead was handed the answers by a book that is more properly a thriller.
That aside, however, the book has some anachronisms in its presentation of Victorian England that were jarring, and even as a thriller the plot had some serious issues in places, with some dropped threads, plot holes, and an ending that was far too sudden and abrupt.
Given the amount of drug use in the book (and in fact instruction on how one smokes opium) I would contest that the reading level for this book is a bit higher than the 12 Publishers Weekly suggests.
Professional Review: From Publishers Weekly (2017)Library Uses: Anachronisms aside, the book could be useful as a more adventure packed look into Victorian England, as well as the trade with the east, including the unsavory aspects of opium smuggling. It could also be used in a program about drug use, the uncommon nature of the drug of choice (opium) would be unusual enough that it might impact the teens in attendance more than talk about drugs they already know about.
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. (12-up)
Readalikes: Given the feel of the book, and the strong female lead, I would lean more towards suggesting Steampunk and action/thriller novels over other historical fiction books, mystery or otherwise. Jon Del Arroz’s recent For Steam and Country is a fun adventure also with a female lead dealing with her father’s death, and The Legacy of Dragons series is another action/Steampunk series with a female lead by Jack Campbell. If it looked like the patron would enjoy it I probably would suggest Penny Dreadful and the Clockwork Copper, in shameless self-promotion, as it has a similar feel to the world and two teen female protagonists. (Well, one teen and one two-year-old robot girl, but mentally she’s young adult, more or less.)
References
Publishers Weekly. (2017). The Ruby in the Smoke. [Review of the book The Ruby in the Smoke]. PWxyz, LLC. Retrieved from https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-394-88826-2
Pullman, P. (1985). The Ruby in the Smoke. New York, NY: Random House Inc.
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