“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.)

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.

This is book 1 of 25 of my Dec 11, 2011 book challenge.