This is the sequel to How to Catch a Bogle, and like that book, it’s middle grade historical-fiction/fantasy: Victorian London, with child-eating monsters called bogles. Birdie McAdam was the child protagonist of that book, and she’s still present in this one, but now her acquaintance Jem Barbary takes center stage: Birdie is no longer an apprentice to the bogler Alfred Bunce, and Alfred is maybe not even killing bogles anymore anyway, though Jem would love to be his apprentice if he were. Early in the book, a barmaid changes Alfred’s mind about his decision to stop bogling: a scullery maid has gone missing in the basement of the place where this barmaid works, presumably eaten by a bogle, and the barmaid harps on how she’d hate for the next child her boss hires to suffer the same fate. Alfred is a tender-hearted guy and can’t say no, and ends up taking Jem along to help with the job.
Once word gets out that Alfred is killing bogles, he keeps getting requests for further jobs: lots more kids have gone missing, all in the same neighborhood. Which is weird, because bogles are normally solitary creatures who don’t live too close to one another. Jem is excited to be working as Alfred’s apprentice, but also having kind of a hard time: being a bogler’s apprentice means acting as bait to lure the bogle from its lair, and that’s pretty terrifying. But his athleticism serves him well: he has tumbling skills and uses them to get out of a bogle’s reach more than once. Meanwhile, though, he’s not just thinking of bogles: he wants revenge on his former master, Sarah Pickles, who ran a gang of child pickpockets. Some people say she’s dead, but Jem doesn’t believe it, so he’s keeping an eye out for her as he and Alfred go about their bogling work.
While I was sad, at first, that this book had shifted focus from Birdie to Jem, I was won over pretty quickly. I like how the book explores how Jem’s past has shaped him (he’s shrewd, and doesn’t trust adults; it’s not until the end of the book that he realizes he can actually trust Alfred, who really is a good guy), and I like the descriptions of how he uses his physical skills in his work: there’s a whole section of descriptions of Jem climbing up things that made my rock-climbing self really happy because it captured the experience/focus of climbing so well. I also like how much cool Victorian infrastructure this book has in it: the newly-constructed Holborn Viaduct, and sewer tunnels, and the railway sidings at Smithfield Market.
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