The Forgotten Room is the fourth book in a series about “enigmologist” Jeremy Logan. It’s a bit predictable, but still enjoyable. It does get a bit gruesome (I gasped out loud and said “nononononono” more than once) so if you don’t like reading gore, I’d skip this one. I also recommend skipping if you know a lot about the human brain, since some of the science fiction parts were a bit hard for me to swallow.
We start in Scotland, where Logan is holding a press conference explaining that he has just debunked the Loch Ness Monster (or has he?), during a celebratory dinner he gets an urgent phone call from a mysterious “think tank” that has had an unexpected suicide (or was it?) and he’s off to investigate! (I’ve never known a professor given as much free time as Yale seems to give Dr. Logan!) The story is a bit of a slow build, and then a race to the finish. Logan is a likeable character, with the requisite troubled past. The setting is perfect, a spoopy old mansion in New England during a storm. The bad guys are scary enough to be suspenseful. The rest of the characters are less fleshed out, without much change throughout the novel.
You’re probably wondering how this book got such a high rating, based on my review, but it’s harder for me to articulate what I like about a book. Here are some things I did like about it:
- It was pleasant to read (apart from the gory bits), the story flowed well and didn’t seem forced
- The descriptions of the house were great! I’d love to visit it
- There wasn’t a forced romance plot, there was a potential interest, but no more
- I genuinely liked Logan, he seemed like a good guy with good intentions, but not flawless
- It was imaginative in the details, the basic plot structure was predictable, but the way we got there was interesting
I probably wouldn’t re-read this book, but I’ll check out the next in the series!
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