I really enjoyed the first book, "Speaks the Nightbird", but this was even better. The cast of characters is excellent. I particularly liked Greathouse, the laundress, and the lawyer Kipperling. The name "Professor Fell" is possibly the best villain name in a long while.

"In this town of soon to be more than five thousand persons there was a governor who wore a dress, a reverend who loved a prostitute, a printmaster who could crack walnuts on his forehead, a high constable who had killed a boy, a magistrate who was once a tennis champion, a laundress who collected secrets, and a coroner who collected bones. There was a barber who owned a squirrel named Sassafras, a tailor who could identify a dead man from a suit’s watch pocket, and a black giantess who would put aside her gittern just long enough to kill you."

McCammon's writing is top-notch. The plot moves along very well and he at times drops in very humorous moments. I'm looking forward to moving on to the next book.