While there has been plenty of murder in “The House of Lost Horizons: A Sarah Jewell Mystery” already, a particularly brutal murder breathes new life into this latest issue.
Written by Mike Mignola and Chris RobersonCover by Christopher Mitten
Illustrated by Leila del Duca
Colored by Michelle Madsen
Lettered by Clem RobinsTwo bodies down. . . how many more to go? A raging storm keeps the group of occult collectors trapped on the island, but some of them appear to be more restless than others. Sarah and Marie-Thérèse divide and conquer, following the two prime suspects down two different, but equally perilous, paths to danger!
I really enjoyed this issue. The first two were burdened with a lot of setup—to be expected, as it goes hand in hand with the genre—but the third is starting to slip free of all that, there’s a notable change of pace, the character interactions are getting more interesting. There’s nothing like having to move a body around to agitate characters, after all.
There’s a shift in Leila del Duca’s artwork too, as she starts using more blacks to fill in walls. In part this is a reaction to the environment as the storm outside gets worse and more and more scenes are set at night. Like the figures from everyone’s nightmares, the shadows are closing in as the story progresses.
Rather curiously, the death of Reggie, who wasn’t exactly the most pleasant of characters, hits harder than any of the others. The death of Herr Eckart, though supernatural, ends up rather pale in comparison to Reggie’s body lying on the ground, his limbs twisted at odd angles. But it’s Marion Loveland’s reaction that gives it real weight—she’s absolutely distraught, and as the issue goes on, she starts fraying at the edges. She was always an animated character, but this particular shift in her character made her even more interesting. I found myself looking for her in scenes, even when she wasn’t talking, just to see how she was reacting.
So, let’s do a quick recap, shall we? There’s have been six potential murders so far: the lawyer, Mr. Severin, died in The Golden Terminus’s private study (cause of death still unknown); Herr Konrad Eckhart was found exsanguinated with a ring of candles around him; and Reginald MacKerrell was brutally beaten to death. But there were three other deaths, Arlen Whelstone and two of his household staff died in a boating accident at least a week before the story began. These weren’t necessarily murder, but I suspect they were, and if that’s the case, then whoever (or whatever) caused these people to die was on the island well before the occult auction.
And then there’s the differences in the murders. I suspect the boating accident was planned, and Severin’s death at least seemed clean, but by the ceremonial-style death of Eckart, it seems the situation is starting to spin out of the murder’s control. MacKerrell’s death seems unplanned and almost entirely reactionary. I definitely get the sense the murderer is in way over their head.
There are still a lot of gaps to fill, but fortunately this issue addressed some of the most glaring ones. There’s a scene on pages 8–9 with Sarah going through Alden Whelstone’s papers that really feels overdue, since it’s the logical place where one would begin such an investigation. In my last review for “The House of Lost Horizons” #2, I mentioned how I felt like the story was battling with constraints of the monthly format. I won’t rehash that, but it’s easier to see with this issue why #2 was that way it was. The scene on pages 8–9 in #3 would have been right at home in #2, but there simply wasn’t space for it. More importantly, there’s no other links to that scene. While I feel like the scene is happening too late in the story in #3, I can see the function of it here, since information brought up in this scene plays into the cliffhanger for the issue. This is the cost of the format. If you move the scene to issue #2, you make #2 stronger at the expense of weakening #3.
Continued belowBut at least now Sarah doesn’t seem to be so blind in her line of enquiry. She now has enough information that she can at least suspect when she’s being lied to, and she’s closer to piecing together a motive. (Even if I still feel like we don’t know nearly enough about Madame Saito yet.)
I’m happy not knowing for now, because issue #4 feels like it’s going to open this thing up in a big way. (I mean, the cover alone adds so much more to this mystery!) But it’s really the small things that make this issue such a pleasure. There’s a few lines of dialogue from Sarah that made me smile, and reminded me all over again why she’s such a fun character to read. I get a kick out of the Golden Terminus from a design perspective, the way del Duca and colorist Michelle Madsen orient the reader in the space and how they play with it to express different moods. Hell, I just get a kick out of the costuming—I appreciate that the characters have a different outfit for each day. It brings the characters to life in a way that makes it easier to start imagining their interior life. Perfect for a murder mystery.
Final Verdict: 7.5 – There’s a definite shift in this issue. Things are getting darker and the characters more unsettled.
