A Sickness in the Family by Denise Mina and Antonio Fuso

I’ve had the flu for the last few days, and consequently have been asleep for a large portion of them. I’m still really excited about reading the 25 books mentioned in my last post, so today I pulled them all out and made a couple of big piles in my room. (I also found some additional books that I haven’t read, but more on them in the future.)

I’ve been going a bit stir crazy, so despite being really woozy, I decided to make a start on the pile, and read the shortest book – A Sickness in the Family by Denise Mina (illustrated by Antonio Fuso.) (In fact, I’m still pretty woozy, so this entry might be even more disjointed than usual.)

cover for “a sickness in the family”I discovered this book on Blogging for a Good Book (run by the Williamsburg Regional Library) and bought it when I was on a “I really need to branch out and not read so much young adult/fantasy”/”I should read mystery authors other than Agatha Christie”/”I should read more graphic novels” kick.The book is about a normal family (or so you think) whose members are being killed off one-by-one. The house might be haunted, but it seems far more likely that a member of the family is the killer.

Even though this was a pretty quick read, the players in the murder mystery (i.e. the Usher family) are set up really well and the setting (their perhaps-haunted house) is definitely atmospheric. The Ushers are all thoroughly unlikeable, and I don’t think anyone is really unhappy when they start dying off. The book is pretty fast-paced, and the twists and turns, although not entirely unpredictable, are pretty fun (especially the end.)

The WRL review of the book describes it as a “delightfully nasty little graphic novel”, and I absolutely concur. My only complaint is that it was so short.

Dec 16, 2011, 9.48pm