The Vanishing children is the 5th book in Graham Brack's marvellous Master Mercurius Mystery Series but unfortunately it is also its weakest one to date.
The novel's threadbare plots introduced early on in the story never managed to seduce my mind but being a true sucker for any new adventure involving the winsome Mercurius I decided to enjoy the ride anyway, an extremely pleasant romp even if the notion of mystery was definitely and totally missing in action as far as I'm concerned this time around.
If you are familiar with this series you will probably enjoy diving once again into the golden age of the Dutch Republic with its political and religious shenanigans and its highly colorful cast of unforgettable characters full of zest and humor, because despite its lackluster plot this novel is still very entertaining and packed with lots of laughter. But if you are new to the delightful world of Master Mercurius I will strongly urge you to start with Death in Delft and make you way down the list and trust me you will definitely enjoy the ride!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Sapere Books for giving me the opportunity to read this wonderful novel prior to its release date

The fifth in the Master Mercurius series, the quality remains extremely high and extremely fun!

Here Mercurius is again summoned by William Of Orange, this time to go to Amsterdam to make the four mayors pay their taxes to him to help fund a potential war. He also wants him to find out what the English in the same city are up to and if they are plotting anything.
Of course Mercurius gets sidetracked along the way as he is approached by a member of the Jewish community in Amsterdam. He wants him to look into the disappearance of three young boys who all went missing in a short space of time. The Amsterdam authorities have dismissed their concerns and say the children must have wandered off and drowned in a canal!
Mercurius not only feels obliged to look into it but also knows that William will only be too happy to take the credit for finding the children and put more pressure on the mayors.

So, this is another great addition to the series. Told in the form of a memoir, the more tales we get in the series the less important the actual story/mystery is to me. Mercurius and his world are the stars of the show and hilariously so. It is such fun to spend time in the world. It’s an odd mixture of historical fiction, a mystery/whodunnit, a comedy and a memoir all wrapped up in and sprinkled with actual events.

The books are also the perfect size. At a little over 200 pages on average, they never overstay their welcome but have enough in them to make them a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Sapere Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

In this fifth episode of Graham Brack's excellent historical Master Mercurius series, Mercurius finds himself sent to Amersterdam on behalf of the Stadhouder, William of Orange, to demand that the Mayors of the city pay their taxes and to check on what the English there are plotting. After he arrive, he is also asked by the Jewish community to look into the disappearance of three young children.

An academic and protestant minister at the University of Leiden, Mercurius has often been called on by William to undertake diplomatic missions or solve mysteries. He has a way of noticing small details and thinking logically that stands him in good stead when taking a fresh look at mysteries that defy others.

The novel is written in a lively and wry style as Mercurius' clever mind and humour shine through. He's becoming better at being a diplomat although still uncomfortable with the trappings that go with that. It makes for an entertaining way to learn a little of the history and life of 17th century Holland and their European neighbours.

Graham Brack writes historical mysteries that are both perceptive and hilarious. He explores serious issues (serious in Reformation-era 17th Century Nemetherlands) of religious conflict, gender, class, and an emerging push for more democratic government. Lest this make his writing sound polemical, let me emphasize the "hilarious" part. This is period detective fiction that will have you reading paragraphs aloud to anyone within earshot.

Exempli gratia—

"[O]n the few occasions that I have come across someone who really needed a priest, I have been as much use as a glass mallet."

"He was King before he was five years old and made policy like a five-year-old for the rest of his life."

"There is not much work for a door-to-door moral philosopher."

"To William's [of Orange] way of thinking, compromise meant accepting the other side's abject surrender gracefully."

Master Mercuius, the central character in this series, is a university lecturer, which requires being an ordained minister of the reformed church, but also an ordained Catholic priest—two irreconcilable identities. He's rather cautious and quite naive, not your typical detective/political fixer in any age, but certainly not in 17th Century Netherlands. He's also a somewhat cynical wit (see above). But somehow, Master Mercurius has come to the attention of William of Orange and keeps getting sent out on complicated, dangerous missions.

This time around, Master Mercurius is simultaneously engaged in three tasks:
• convince the four mayors of Amsterdam that the must pay the taxes owed to William
• determine whether there is anything nefarious going on among the English residents of Amsterdam, who fled their home country when the monarchy was restored (cameo appearance by John Locke)
• find a trio of kidnapped Jewish children and return them to their parents.
Just that.

If you haven't begun reading this series yet, do so at once! (Seriously. I almost never use exclamation points in book reviews.) If you have been reading this series, I assume you stopped paying attention to this review several paragraphs ago and are out now trying to hunt down a copy of The Vanishing Children. And if you aren't, why not?

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Net Galley; the opinions are my own.

The Vanishing Children is the latest adventure with Master Mercurius by Graham Brack. I was almost as sceptical reading these books at first like Mercurius is doubtful about him being sent on various diplomatic missions. But they are great and in this one I think our hero is getting more comfortable with the powers he has acting on behalf of the Stadhouder. This book is as always filled with humor and some kind of crime. Master Mercurius is sent to Amsterdam to get the city to pay its taxes. While there he is confronted with the mystery of three missing jewish boys and the fact that no one seems to care. I must thank @netgalley @sappere.books for giving me this advance copy and @graham_brack for writing it.

The Vanishing Children is the fifth book in the Master Mercurius Mysteries series by British author, Graham Brack. Just as Master Mercurius is trying to devise a way to answer his (Catholic) Bishop’s summons to Belgium, his Rector at the University of Leiden presents, to his dismay, an urgent summons from the Stadhouder, William of Orange. “I had noticed that working for the Stadhouder was hazardous.”


At the Stadhouder’s Palace, our favourite seventeenth Century man of the cloth and lecturer in moral philosophy learns he is destined for Amsterdam, charged with investigating what the English exiles in the city are plotting, and getting the city’s recalcitrant merchants, “those parasites in Amsterdam “, to pay their taxes. William tells him “I want you to go up there and put the fear of God into them, and who better to do it than someone who knows God’s ways intimately?”

So that he is afforded the respect due to the Stadhouder’s personal emissary, he has to wear a large jewelled collar and travel in a closed carriage, with a manservant, accompanied by the Captain of Horse (a Scot) and a troop of armed soldiers. After an awkward (for Mercurius, amusing for the reader) lunch stop en route, he arrives to a lukewarm reception from Amsterdam’s four mayors, who remain extremely resistant to the idea of paying William’s tax.

On top of his assigned diplomatic and plot-detecting tasks, Mercurius soon finds himself agreeing to investigate recent abductions from the Jewish quarter. “Three Jewish children have disappeared. We believe that they have been abducted and may still be living. But the authorities insist that all three must have suffered accidents. We cannot get the matter properly investigated.”

By the time Mercurius has, in between fruitless meetings with the mayors and covert observation of possible plotters, examined the scenes and questioned witnesses, it is clear that victim blaming is nothing new. As always, Mercurius humble about his abilities, and berates himself for his stupidity when the lightbulb moment hits. He gets a lesson in probability from a soldier and learns about the useful art of bluff from card-players.

If it takes a little while to get to the meat of the mystery, that’s because Mercurius does tend to offer commentary on everyday life and the people he encounters, which is probably the reason this series is so entertaining: a wealth of historical tidbits (including something about the Panama Canal), all wrapped up in dry humour and insightful observations about human behaviour.

Just as you don’t read McCall Smith’s No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series only for the detective aspect, you don’t read either of Brack’s series solely for the crime-solving, even though the mystery in this instalment is excellent. Some aspects of the resolution, though, do have Mercurius reconsidering his allegiance to the Catholic religion.
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Everything about Master Mercurius is a delight, including the challenge of “being visibly Protestant but secretly Catholic” thus obliged to give occasional sermons in the Dutch Reformed Church: “it was becoming very difficult to preach doctrines about which I had grave reservations.” He is pleasantly surprised that the fathers of Amsterdam are not pushing their daughters onto him, testing his vow of celibacy, but is still tempted by one of the fairer sex. Every Master Mercurius novel is an opportunity to learn whilst laughing out loud. More, please!
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Sapere Books (but I also purchased a copy!)

In this cross between historical fiction and mystery, Mercurius, a professor of philosophy at Leiden University, a clergyman of the Reformed (Calvinist) church, and secretly an ordained Catholic priest, is assigned by William of Orange to negotiate the payment of taxes that have been refused by the city of Amsterdam. His role as diplomat is further complicated when the Jewish residents of the city appeal to him for help in finding three young children who have been abducted from their homes.

The mystery is well-developed and the writing is wry with a continual undercurrent of humor. The setting of Amsterdam in the Dutch Golden Age is interesting much as the politics and religious debate and confusion of the seventeenth century are fascinating. I particularly enjoyed this depiction of William of Orange and his wife, Mary.

All in all, I found this to be an engrossing read that I could finish within two days of starting it. I would recommend it to historical fiction and mystery fans, especially for those who would appreciate the chance to visit seventeenth century Holland.