This is a delightful, romance, mystery, and detective story, full of history and brimming with intelligent and superbly-rendered characters.
First Novels
Bradshaw had achieved a particular kind of literary feat. He has written a 19th-century novel, set in Toronto in 1856. This is not merely a detective story in period dress, but a carefully constructed and exquisitely sketched novel of manners.
Toronto Star
...Death in the Age of Steam...offers respide from an overwrought milieu.
Calgary Herald
Mel Bradshaw has created a novel that is very hard to put down. While it is extremely linear in structure, it is peopled by interesting characters utterly unlike English or American characters of the same era. Bradshaw's world is completely Canadian, with an assumption that the reader knows at least a little Canadian history.
Edmonton Journal
...exceptionally good first novel...Bradshaw keeps the reader firmly on the pavement with sights, sounds, smells and vivid descriptions of Victorian Canadian life.
The Globe and Mail
Mel Bradshaw may have set his mystery in a time when the word 'detective' was still a neologism, but the Canada he so lovingly re-creates is far from unrecognizable. From Toronto's Bay St. to Kingston's penitentiary and Montreal's Bonsecours market, from the latest fashions of the era to the political clashes that defined it, the world resurrected by Bradshaw is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
The Montreal Gazette
It's a wonderful read. It's an easy read. You can get right into the characters and the scenes.
Hametown Today on CHML AM 900 Hamilton
This book, not to be devoured in one sitting, is meatier than many mysteries...with psychological depth and an acute sense of time and place, this book calls for slow savoring.
ForeWord Magazine
This is a quest novel, the journeys and trials of a knight-errant in search of his lady fiar. It is written in an unhurried style, the sentences rolling over each other, like the majestice St. Lawrence River itself, along whose shores, and those of Lake Ontario, much of the action takes place.
I Love A Mystery