Title:
Memento Mori
Author: Katy
O’Dowd
Genre: Crime
Fiction/Victorian Mafia/ Alternate history with a dash of
Steampunk
Publisher: Untold Press
Release Date: April 1st, 2014
Tour Host: Lady Amber's Tours
Publisher: Untold Press
Release Date: April 1st, 2014
Tour Host: Lady Amber's Tours
MY REVIEW:
In 1865 a dying man gives a starving
girl a necklace. I thought from the very first sentence the writing
in this book was really good. It immediately drew me in and held my
attention. I like steampunk and I was enjoying this book a lot. It
reminded me a lot of Gail Carrigers books. 4 stars
Blurb:
Take
tea with the Victorian Mafia – organized crime has never been so
civilized
Revenge
is a dish best served cold. At the Lamb residence, it is also served
on fine bone china.
The
untimely demise of Thaddeus Lamb leaves his son Riley in charge of
the vast Lamb empire, which imports tea, picks pockets, extorts, and
keeps men warm on cold winter's nights. And so the Lambs grieve for
their father in the best way they know how… Retribution.
Hired
by the new head of the Fox Family, a position recently vacated by
another untimely demise, the assassin O'Murtagh is tasked with the
utter destruction of all the Lamb Family's business associates. They
learn the hard way that there is no better hit man than a beautiful
woman with tricks and weapons up her finely coiffed sleeves.
Treachery
and deceit abound in the streets of London, and no one is safe.
Honestly, it's enough to make anyone drink. Would you care for one
lump or two?
Author
Bio:
Katy
is an arts and entertainment journalist and has worked for Time Out,
Associated Newspapers and Comic Relief and her articles have appeared
in The Times (London), Metro (London) and many other arts and
entertainment publications, paper and online.
Alongside
writing with her Dad under the pen-name Derry O’Dowd, whose first
book ‘The
Scarlet Ribbon’
was chosen to launch the History Press Ireland’s fiction line, she
writes under her own name. 'The Lady Astronomer', a YA Steampunk tale
was released by Untold Press in 2012.
Katy
reviews for the Historical Novels Review and the British Fantasy
Society.
Links:Katy
blogs at www.katyodowd.com
Twitter: @katyod
Facebook: www.facebook.com/katy.odowd
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5311518.Katy_O_Dowd
eBook Links
Twitter: @katyod
Facebook: www.facebook.com/katy.odowd
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5311518.Katy_O_Dowd
eBook Links
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Memento-Mori-Katy-ODowd-ebook/dp/B00JG3NQ4O
Amazon Smart Url: http://bookShow.me/B00JG3NQ4O
Goodreads- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21795048-memento-mori
Amazon Smart Url: http://bookShow.me/B00JG3NQ4O
Goodreads- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21795048-memento-mori
Excerpt
Snip. The
jewelled secateurs caught the soft light thrown by the candles. Snip.
Dark orange on green. Snip. Tiny white blossoms fell to the stone
floor. Snip, snip.
Carmine
Fox took an orange in her gloved hand and turned it over, this way
and that, examining the pitted skin and running a finger along the
bumps and grooves in the fruit.
In an
alcove, the huge Brass Lady statue gleamed, her beautiful features
painted buttery gold, eyes looking blindly at nothing at all.
Carmine's
dress swept the floor, not a mourning dress as you might expect,
having lost her father, but rather dove grey and lavender picked out
with black trim along the panel, cuffs, hem, and bustle. Her hair,
long and coiled, was the color of Grip's wings, as were her eyes. The
muted tones of her dress made her sallow, or maybe it was just the
lack of light.
Years of
water and living things within the man-made lake had given the huge
cathedral style glass ceiling and everything beneath a greenish hue
and made the walls bleed rust.
She looked
up from her study of the orange and threw it across the room, faster
than the eye could see.
The woman
standing in the shadows caught the orange, her arm shooting up to
stop the fruit, as it nestled in her palm.
"Oh,
brava."
O'Murtagh
stood silently before Carmine Fox who walked toward her, the
secateurs dangling lazily from her hand.
"Quiet
little thing, aren't you?"
Fox peered
at her intently, taking in the pale face and brown eyes framed with a
veil of auburn hair.
"Well,
quiet suits my needs. Feel free to eat the orange, which will be
sweet and ripe. Ah, but how could such a thing grow here you wonder?"
She paused. "It didn't, of course, there is a vast orangery in
the house, but I like to be here to prune, the setting eases my
mind."
O'Murtagh
made no move to peel the fruit; instead she put it in one of the many
pockets of her skirts.
Carmine
Fox shrugged. "No matter. When you come to eat the orange, you
will find it as I say. But now, we have other matters to discuss."
She walked
back to the table where the plants stood and put the secateurs down.
"You
have come highly recommended." Her heel tapped on the black and
white tiled floor. "I have been told of your merits, misdeeds,
and probably know more about you than your own mother, whom I believe
has been dead a long time. But that doesn't interest me, your skills
do."
O'Murtagh
nodded imperceptibly.
"This
is not a pretty tale, but then I suppose these things never are."
Fox sighed and smiled, pacing the room, warming to her tale and the
task ahead.
"Tell
me, O'Murtagh. Do you believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth?" Fox waved her hand airily. "We are not here to talk
about the philosophy of doddery old men falling asleep and drooling
into their beards. I mean vengeance, retribution. Honor, even if it
is only the kind to be found among thieves."
Fox
stopped pacing, abruptly, and O'Murtagh could feel the heightened
tension in the room under the still water.
"There
is no need for you to know everything, but know this," Carmine
resumed talking and walking, "I am not sorry that my father is
dead. Vile man. He made my mother's life a misery. Drove her to her
death. I had this statue of her made. You know, I talk to her as I
prune." She gazed fondly at the Brass Lady.
"But
he didn't do this alone. No. Rather he was fuelled by his once great
friend turned great enemy. Interesting that they should have died in
the same week, is it not? Thaddeus Lamb and my father climbed the
tree to the gold at the top, from ragged boys to prosperous men,
branch by branch to the prize at the end. Suffice to say there was a
falling out and my father the Fox did everything in his power to
bring the traitor Lamb down."
Carmine
went to the Brass Lady, and standing on tiptoe, ran her hand down the
statue's cold cheek.
"My
mother would have hated to see this. Hated to see what he made me.
But my father not only left me his riches, he left me his hatred.
After my mother died, all I heard of was how he was going to get his
revenge. Now that he is no longer here, it is up to me to see this
thing through. You do understand, don't you?"
"I
do."
O'Murtagh's
voice was so quiet that Carmine Fox wasn't sure she had heard her in
the first place.
"I
suppose you do, why would you be in your line of work otherwise?"
The
assassin kept her brown gaze on the woman who had hired her, but held
her tongue.
"Very
well. Your job then, is to take the family down. Not directly, but by
hitting them where they will hurt the most. Trade routes, business
associates, and so on. My father left a diary full of any information
you should need. I shall release the names of four people to you when
the time is right. None of this shall be traced back to me, and if
you should fail, I will make your life one long misery."
"I
have no doubt."
"Good.
So," Carmine Fox rubbed her hands together, almost gleefully,
"Thaddeus Lamb, the Head of the Family is out of our way. I have
been told that other factions are gathering like vultures over the
rotting corpse of what remains and that the Lambs–when they are
able to act–will find other matters to occupy their time. Such as a
nasty little turf war. At which point we shall have progressed to a
point where we will be able to muzzle them entirely."
She
laughed, and O'Murtagh, seasoned as she was, felt the small hairs on
her arms raise and her skin became as pitted as that of the orange in
her pocket.
Fox
pirouetted, her skirts spreading out and then settling.
"None
of it shall ever be traced back to me," she delighted in her
glee, before quietening. "Then I can get straight to the heart
of things."
O'Murtagh's
place was not to ask. She was being paid handsomely and had more time
than she cared for to do these jobs. Nor was she squeamish, her
body-count was impressive. Though she stopped short at children,
babies, and pregnant women.
"Now,
my dear." Fox clapped her hands together. "Time for tea.
Would you care to accompany me back to the house?"
Thank you so much! :)
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