The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker

It's been a while since I finished reading this book, so I apologize that I can't go into the detail that I sometimes do.

The book opens with the narrator being woken up in the middle of the night.  He's a lawyer who is summoned to a friend's house because her father was attacked.  There is no sign of the attacker, but it was obvious that they were trying to get into his safe.  While her father is alive, he appears to be in some sort of hypnotic state.  The narrator, the Dr., the police, and the daughter all work to solving the mystery.

Most of the book is spent working toward figuring out who the attacker was, and how they were managing to do so, undetected, despite two people being in the room when the attacks occur.  This is by far the strongest part of the book.  As answers are discovered, I feel like the book got weaker.

Since this is a Bram Stoker book, it's obvious that there is something supernatural going on.  Unfortunately, I feel like the book would have been much better if there wasn't.  If it were a regular crime/detective novel, I think it would have been a much better book.  As it stands, I feel like the ending was the worst part.  I feel like the characters were acting in a very short-sighted manner and I couldn't quite understand their motivation for throwing caution to the wind in order to achieve their goal.  Then it all ended with disappointment for me.

I want to make a couple of notes before wrapping up this post.  Firstly, before I lived in London, I would have found it very strange to read that the sun was rising slightly after 3am each morning.  However, during the summer, the sun does, indeed, rise that early in the morning.  Secondly, there are a lot of references to a star constellation they refer to as the Plough.  Apparently, this is what the British call the Big Dipper.  The more you know, right?

I was all set to recommend this book while I was reading it.  I really had to downgrade it once I finished, though.  I can only somewhat recommend this book.

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