Book Review: Henry Wood Detective Agency Time and Again (Book 2)

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Book 2 in the Henry Wood Detective Agency series, Time and Again was every bit as good as the first, my review of that first book is here in fact Mr Meeks, or Brian to me, as I follow him on Twitter at @ExtremelyAvg seems to be getting into his stride and I actually enjoyed this one even more than the first, which clearly bodes well for number three in the series....

So, we are still in 50's New York and Henry has settled in to his new office in the Flatiron building with some of the quirky characters, such as Bob, turning up here again , this time helping Henry in a new case.

Can it be called  new case though.  Henry receives a visit from one of New York's finest telling him that he needs to come with him, there's been an accident!

On arrival at the scene of the accident Henry learns the news that his mentor and boss, Michael Thomas Moore a PI, who trained Henry in Detective work, is the victim of a hit and run, while that in itself is a crime, the police are looking at it as an accident.

It doesn't take Henry long to look at it as a crime, a street full of parked cars and where the only gap is, a bunch of dog ends discarded from someone sitting in a car ... waiting and watching.

Henry asks to look at the body and lifts Mickey's note book from it to look at later.

Henry soon discovers that his old boss, mentor and friend hasn't changed his ways and that the notes of the case he was working on are all in code but he does discover that he was working on a case that involved the shady side of the art world with secretive collectors who were willing to pay vast sums for black market art.  Interestingly and as an aside I recently watched The Monuments Men at the cinema and Mr Meeks does touch on this in this book, without actually referring to that film title, I suspect, like the rest of us he did not know of their existence while researching for this one but he does describe what was happening to works of art during WWII in the same way as the movie, which makes for a contemporary and fascinating link!

An old flame appears on the scene, well not really, more a case of unrequited love on Henry's part which complicates the mix and a secret auction being set up to buy a piece of lost art that most people, even in the art world, had never heard of.  Henry finds he needs to call in reinforcements and enlists the help of Big Mike, from book 1, who has accumulated leave from the NYPD and Professor Dr Brookert from NYU. He even manages to get a secretary to manage his life, I mean office, and things begin to pick up in that area but the case has more twists than a spiral stair case.

The strange cabinet in Henry's wood work cellar makes a couple of appearances disgorges clues once again, but Henry so wrapped up in the case and the reappearance of Katarina in town, that he misses the first set of clues, which he believes, had he found them, may have prevented Mickey's death and this troubles him greatly.  I'm sure that in book three, or at least I hope, in book three that the mystery of this time shifting magic cabinet will be explained and while it is an anomaly it somehow doesn't seem to out of place here!

Mr Meeks does need to slow down a little and maybe take a little more time in editing, before pushing the upload button to find and correct the few minor errors sprinkled throughout, but and I do emphasise that they were  minor, they did not detract from the overall enjoyment of the story.  My only criticism of the story line would probably come at the end of chapter 54 leading into chapter 55.  I finished off the chapter started the new one and then had to go back as I thought I had missed either a chapter or at least a couple of paragraphs as some of the main characters were being followed to a destination and then suddenly seemed to have somehow been kidnapped by other unknown characters.  It did confuse a little but did become clear in the end!

All in all, another good book from Mr Meeks and Henry Wood ......


Editing for Kindle /iPad: 4 out of 5
Reading Enjoyment: 5 out of 5
Page length on kindle /iPad: 225 with proper page numbers too. Oh what joy....
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 5 out of 5