What We’re Reading

Benjamin Franklin Takes the Case | Robert Lee Hall

This is the first in a delightful series featuring Benjamin Franklin in London as an ambassador for Pennsylvania in an effort to sway public opinion about the Penns and their treatment of the colonists. We meet Nicholas Handy, and orphaned printer’s helper, who we discover is Franklin’s natural son. The fiction of a hidden journal is used as the basis for the stories that unfold (proving the truth of the family legend passed down to the 20th century Handy who finds the book.)

Franklin is presented as a delightful sleuth, astute, observant, brilliant and eccentric. And quite the ladies man. All told I have read 5 books in the series (Murder at Drury Lane, Benjamin Franklin and a case of Christmas murder, Benjamin Franklin and a case of Artful Murder, Murder by the Waters). There are still a few to go.

Thoroughly entertaining, light mystery fare, liberally sprinkled with views of life in 18th century London.