Victorian Mystery/Thriller from Tim Mason, THE NIGHTINGALE AFFAIR

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Because Mason places the killer and his excuses openly among his protagonists, and the threats to Field and his family are menacing and time-linked, The Nightingale Affair is at least as much of a thriller as it is a historical novel.”

 

Tim Mason’s earlier historical mystery, The Darwin Affair, brought Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field into investigating the attempted London murder of Queen Victoria. In a clever twist of expectations, The Nightingale Affair offers a sequel in which Charles Field no longer holds a position with the police, and has sunk to investigating cheating spouses to earn a living. Other aspects of his life seem well in order, though, with his foster son a newly approved mounted policeman, his foster daughter no longer a thief but a clean and cheerful young woman eager to study nursing, and his wife Jane managing the household happily.

 

Then, in a matter of hours, it’s all upside down, as Field discovers a murder with the unmistakable “calling card” of a killer he thought he’d finished off during his career, in a stint with Florence Nightingale’s British nurses during the Crimean War in the 1850s. At the same time, his son Tom loses his new job through making a morally right choice that counters his superior officer, his daughter Belinda comes under threat, and his wife is summoned once again to the support of now ailing and aging Miss Nightingale.

 

The book dances back and forth in time, with the heroic Miss Nightingale at the focus of each scenario, and Field himself endlessly struggling to catch up with the nobility and self-denial that the nursing leader models. Mason shifts points of view often, including indulging the killer himself with a podium that allows vicious revenge to justify all sorts of violence.

 

Mason’s background includes the stage, and there are abundant Shakespearean moments scattered through almost 400 pages of this lively Victorian thriller. Cameo appearances by Benjamin Disraeli and Wilkie Collins and the involvement of the most noted novelist of the time, Charles Dickens, add twists of interest and humor. But death itself is treated solemnly, a fitting counterpart to the woman Mason presents as a guardian of the lives of young men at war and postwar hospitals: a woman of “breathless speed” and irresistible commitment, Florence Nightingale herself:

 

“There were fully a dozen people, almost all female, rushing in and out of Nightingale’s tower headquarters when Charles Field first saw her. He knew it had to be Nightingale; she was the calm eye of a whirling storm, standing at her desk, answering questions and asking them, issuing orders, and occasionally making entries in a ledger as she stood. Her voice was quiet but had a reedy strength that cut through the seeming chaos around her.”

 

Because Mason places the killer and his excuses openly among his protagonists, and the threats to Field and his family are menacing and time-linked, The Nightingale Affair is at least as much of a thriller (think: ticking clock) as it is a historical novel. Yet the portrait of Nightingale both in her prime and as an aging yet still effective advocate is strong and memorable, giving the book its lively flavor that hints at all the shifts in women’s rights and health care about to unfold. Don’t expect an extraordinary police investigation here; read the book instead for the colorful storytelling around this classic “change agent” and her insistence on respect, honor, and care.

 

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

The Anti-Sherlock Holmes, William Arrowood, Returns in THE MURDER PIT

Glasgow-born Mick Finlay has taken rough conditions to the extreme, including the condition of his detective, in his second Arrowood mystery, THE MURDER PIT. And it's a doozy. With twists, risks, extreme danger, and graphic descriptions of filth and poverty, it's an outrageous counter to the civilied Sherlock Holmes narratives supposedly being printed at the same time that Arrowood and his loyal sidekick Norman Barnett are scrambling to make a living. And there's a fierce rivalry between Arrowood, the "workingman's detective," and the pricey and elegant Holmes: one that's more than just the part of the city where they live, the amount they get paid, the gap between praise and vilification in the London newspapers.

For Arrowood, a man of enormous heart (and girth), opens the interior of crime by observing the personality and emotions of the person he's facing. He puzzles over Darwin, sort out early psychology, grieves for the lot of the people in the slums around him in an emotional stew quite foreign to the celebrated cerebral sleuth of Baker Street. As he warms up to a case involving a woman who can't seem to speak for herself -- she's severely learning disabled and has been married off in a suspicious financial transaction, to a disgusting farm far from home -- Arrowood depends on Barnett's initial survey of the possibly forced bride:

"So Birdie looked in low spirits in train?" he asked, shoving the last piece of warm muffin in his gob.

"That's what it looked like to me. And I felt she wanted to show me too. But I couldn't swear by it. It was dark, and she only looked up quick."

"We ca all recognize grief," he said. "Mr. Darwin says it's universal: raised inner eyebrows, furrowed forehead, lowered mouth corners. The Hindoos, the Malays, the ancient Greeks—all the same. If we couldn't recognize sadness in others we couldn't sympathize. And what would society be like without sympathy, Barnett?"

"Like London sometimes, sir."

Brace for filth, and description of disgusting conditions, from the reek of Arrowood himself, to the pig manure and malicious violence that follow when the pair dig into what's going on in a very unscrupulous medical practice. It's often ugly in Arrowood's London.

But it's also a city of passion and surprising tenderness, and Barnett himself will finally reveal the sorry state of his life to his employer, whose caring is direct and honest. (Just don't get close enough to let Arrowood enfold you in an embrace, an action that again the posh Sherlock Holmes would not condone.)

The devil may be in the details. Walking with this unusual detection team may turn your stomach every few pages. Yet the plot twists are agile, the discoveries worth the work, and yes, I'd read another in this series. I liked the first one, too (Arrowood.) Brought from the UK by the Mira imprint of HarperCollins.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Gritty Alternative to Sherlock Holmes, in ARROWOOD by Mick Finlay

Today's the release day for ARROWOOD, a debut crime novel from Mick Finlay. The publisher (Mira) captured the book's premise in this tag line: "London Society takes its problems to Sherlock Holmes. Everyone else goes to Arrowood."

It's a great way to enter the Holmes world without trying to craft yet another pastiche. Consider William Arrowood a rough character himself, a former newspaper man whose scorn for the chronicled super-deductive high-society sleuth peppers his conversations -- and determines his attitude toward people in his South London slum who seek his help. If they reveal they wish they could afford Holmes instead, they're in trouble!

The opening of the book, described as "South London, 1895," sets the scene perfectly, from the point of view of Arrowood's assistant, Mr. Barnett:

The very moment I walked in that morning I could see the guvnor was in one of his tempers. His face was livid, his eyes puffy, his hair, least what remained on that scarred knuckle of a head, stuck out over one ear and lay flat with grease on the other side. He was an ugly sight, all right. I lingered by the door in case he threw his kettle at me again. Even from there I could smell the overnight stink of gin on his foul breath.

"Sherlock blooming Holmes!" he bellowed, slamming his fist down on the side-table. "Everywhere I look they're talking about that charlatan!"

When a young French lady in a bonnet and billowing skirt arrives to see Arrowood's help, it takes all of Barnett's skill to keep her case attractive to his "guvnor." She risks losing the sleuth by her admiration for Holmes, of course, and also be being French ... and female. But Barnett has the bottom line in mind, and negotiates a case.

When it becomes obvious that Arrowood and Barnett will have to spy on and probably confront members of a dangerous criminal gang that's already threatened their lives, the crime novel turns into a Victorian thriller, hot with action and risk.

The book's well written, with just a hint of "debut" novel in its pacing. Most appealing is actually the character of Arrowood's sidekick Barnett (a more emotionally complicated person than Doyle's Dr. Watson). Details of gritty and sometimes grotesque Victorian poverty come through, along with a finely honed edge of violence.

Mick Finlay has an unusual background for this field, one that may bear significant importance as the promised series continues:

Mick Finlay was born in Glasgow and grew up in Canada and England. He now divides his time between Brighton and Cambridge. He teaches in a Psychology Department, and has published social psychological research on political violence, persuasion, and verbal and non-verbal behaviour. He reads widely in history, psychology, and enjoys a variety of fiction genres (including crime, of course!)

Holmes fanatics are safe in picking up ARROWOOD because it steers neatly around the established sleuth's famous cases, keeping the focus in this down-and-dirty world instead.  The feel is very similar to the series by M.R.C. Kasasian, and I enjoyed the dark humor. Well done, Mick Finlay!

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Gower St Detective Series #3, DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA, M.R.C. Kasasian

M.R.C. (Martin) Kasasian's Gower St Detective Series is quirky, often confusing, frequently dark, threaded through with vicious humor -- and irresistible in terms of posing puzzles to solve and placing it all in the most graphic sort of Victorian world.

In short, I like these books. A lot. My only problem has been deciding which friends to share them with. It's entirely possible that anyone I give a Gower St book to will think I am as strange as the characters within. Alas!

And they are fiercely memorable characters. For instance, there's the narrator, a young woman named March Middleton -- except she only narrates part of DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA. There's her godfather Sidney Grice, most famous and most unpleasant detective in the mean streets of London. (Not to mention his insistence on disgusting vegetarian meals, his abuse of his untutored maid-of-all-work, and his scorn for March Middleton herself.)

The puzzles set before March and Grice in the previous two books, The Mangle Street Murders and The Curse of the House of Foskett, have dragged March into gutters and gruesome crime scenes. Her assistance to Grice is a painful necessity: Stranded in his home, unable to live separately due to the mores of Victorian London (and lack of funds), she's caught up in his investigations for lack of anything else to do. And even though his lessons to her are mean-spirited and stingy, she's learning how to assess a crime scene.

But as DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA opens, March is on her own, unexpectedly, when a summons arrives from a relative she never knew existed. Risky though it is to accept such an invitation, she feels compelled: Perhaps this new "uncle" can shed light on the terrible suspicion she's harboring about her godfather's role in the death of her own mother.

What March can't have expected, though, is that Uncle Tolly's home will exert such odd effects on her that she'll soon be convinced she herself has committed murder. Will Sidney Grice exert himself far enough to solve her case? Or will his evidence condemn her in court?

Even as March struggles to gain Grice's assistance, the pair continue to play out a "who's on first" sort of dialogue with the uneducated, blunt-tongued maid, Molly:

"Dear March," Mr G spoke tenderly, "I think you may be telling the truth that you do not know if you did it -- whatever it may be."

Molly came in and put a tea tray on the table. "Cook said I was very rude to say that about your dress the other day, miss."

"It does not matter," I told her.

"I just wanted to make it clear," she continued. "There wasn't not nothing wrong with the dress. Anybody else might have looked pretty in it."

"Thank you, Molly."

"And -- "

"Get out," her employer commanded, "before Miss Middleton attacks you as she allegedly did the last maid who crossed her path."

"Oh miss." Molly put her hand to her mouth. "I never even knew you had a path. I hope I never allegingly cross it."

As you can see, the further you're drawn into DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA, the more you are trapped halfway between Alice in Wonderland, and Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a dash of Jasper Fforde on the top. Is this your kind of book?

I confess it's mine on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays, and crazy though the series is, I can't put the books down, once I start them. Kasasian's plot twists are always unexpected and bizarre, although perfectly reasonable in hindsight (considering the characters involved). The pace is brisk, and the frank depiction of the dirt and dismay of Victorian everyday life is oddly endearing. Most of all, March Middleton is someone worth saving, somehow, so her disappearance in the middle of DEATH DESCENDS presses the book into desperate straits.

I know -- you're going to tell me you are NOT one of the people I should give this book to. Wait -- you've read this far? Maybe ... maybe you like this crazy British humor in detective guise, after all? Go ahead -- get a copy and enjoy snickering and snorting.

Yes, you can read this without reading the other two books first. But I think it's a lot more fun for this series to take one after another. Mute the phone, and keep the tea and crumpets (no cold cabbage stews!) coming.

PS - There's no author website at the moment, as far as I can tell, although Pegasus Crime hosts a launching spot for Kasasian. Look for him on social media instead.

Lively Victorian Mystery, A CURIOUS BEGINNING, Deanna Raybourn

For regular readers of historical mysteries, Deanna Raybourn is a familiar name, author of the Lady Julia Grey series. A CURIOUS BEGINNING is the start of a new series, featuring Victoria Speedwell -- and it's great fun.

Victoria's been an orphan "all her life" pretty much -- adopted (after her mother's death) as a small child by two spinster aunts, and moving often from one location in England to another. As an adult, she's already a much-traveled adventurer and lepidopterist whose butterfly-collecting adventures include travel overseas, exploration of volcanoes and jungles, and a generous amount of romantic yet unfettered exploration along the way. (But never with anyone from "home," from England.)

At the modest funeral in 1887 for her remaining aunt, whom she tended at the end, Victoria realizes that while she may not have many riches beyond her butterfly net and her adroitly fashioned clothing (and modest protective gear, from hatpins to blades), she's free to make her own way. "Aunt Nell had been the final knotted obligation tying me to England, and I was unfettered once and for all, able to make my way in the world as I chose."

After bluntly declining plans made by the local vicar and his wife for her future, her return to her aunts' home to collect her carpetbag and leave the key is abruptly knocked off kilter by an invasion and attempted kidnapping. The Baron Maximilian von Stauffenbach arrives in the nick of time to assist her, and escorts her to London (a very festive city, preparing for the Golden Jubilee of the Queen) -- where he leaves her for safekeeping in the fascinating home-and-workshop of a clever if grouchy taxidermist, Mr. Stoker. But the Baron's murder quickly puts an end to any safety in this location, as well as to Victoria's hopes of learning about her dead mother from the Baron, who seemed somehow connected. Soon she's in flight with Stoker, toward refuge with a gypsy circus, and more threats, risks, and adventures.

The change is just what she needed:

I was not meant for sickrooms and poultices; I was fashioned of the stern stuff of adventurers. ... I felt in this new adventure I was rousing to life again. I was a butterfly, newly emerged from the chrysalis, damp winged and trembling with anticipation. ... There would be time enough for my own flight, I decided.

Yet even circus travel isn't safe enough, as murderers and other violent sorts pick up her trail. Soon Victoria's showing her courage and skills, and rather regretting, in terms of her companion, Stoker, that she's made a practice of not romancing Englishmen.

I enjoyed this lively romp with a heroine who surely would have scandalized her Victorian contemporaries -- although of course there were similar adventurous women in that time who simply left their stodgy homeland and arrived in, say, Arabia. Victoria Speedwell is clearly their sort. Her escapades and escapes are a delight. And if the final untwisting of the mystery is a wee bit over the top, well, it's all in fun anyway, just as every day with this staunch scientific romantic is bound to be. I look forward to more in the series! And since this is a new series, there's no need to go looking for preceding titles.

Victoria Speedwell isn't quite as firmly in charge as, say, Georgette Heyer's "Grand Sophy," but she's much more aware and skilled than Marguerite St. Just in The Scarlet Pimpernel. Her scientific knowledge, of course, brings to mind Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce. And as a whole, the book has the merriment of a good Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Recommended for pure entertainment!

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

THE CONNICLE CURSE, Gregory Harris (Colin Pendragon Mystery #3)

When a "noted detective" in a Victorian setting arrives with a sidekick who is male and admiring, it's easy to assume a Sherlock Holmes and Watson pastiche is underway. Whether that's what Gregory Harris intended with The Arnafour Affair and The Bellingham Bloodbath, I'll have to leave up to him -- but the third in the series, THE CONNICLE CURSE, is much too enjoyable and unusual to be pigeonholed so simply.

Athletic and determined Colin Pendragon and his more fragile partner, Ethan Pruitt, have made the English news with their crime-solving, so that Annabelle Connicle swiftly hires their services to solve the presumed murder of her missing husband. Colin's connections through his politically powerful father -- who doesn't appear in this book but whose effect is impressive -- enable him to challenge a handful of sneering Scotland Yard officers to investigate the case. And soon a body is indeed identified as Mr. Connicle's, and there are more to follow.

But Scotland Yard may have been a bit hasty, and although Colin points out the mistakes that the "professionals" and their coroner keep accumulating, Sergeant Evans and Inspector Varcoe aren't happy to accept corrections. What a pity ... because the case keeps getting more tangled, as the Yard men continue to misinterpret and to accept "common knowledge," quickly blaming the crimes on the strangers in the scene: an African couple hired by the Connicles and fully scorned by the wealthy and rather immoral neighbors on scene.

The plot thickens, and incorporating a street youngster willing to follow villains for a living adds a dash of diversity and delight to the investigations -- in fact, since Colin and Ethan are suddenly involved in two cases at once, it's handy to have a helper who doesn't mind dirty work or evading the law, as long as he gets paid for information achieved. "Our Paul is turning out to be quite an entrepreneur," Colin Pendragon gloats cheerfully. But Ethan, our narrator, is not sure that's a good thing. He's identified far more closely with the orphan, and the shadows of his own past keep getting called up, in spite of Pendragon's efforts to protect him.

And here is where this enjoyable traditional mystery (follow the money and cherchez la femme) crosses into fresh terrain: Colin once rescued Ethan from dire straits, involving mental illness, drugs, and more. And the two are, in the most tender and domestic way, lovers as well as crime-solving partners, unsuccessfully trying to avoid having their relationship noticed by the Yard's tough men. Harris spins the story deftly around this unusual focal point, and when it's time to resolve the tragedies that Mrs. Connicle is enduring, Colin's persistence on the case is strongly influenced by the pain he's seen Ethan face.

I enjoyed THE CONNICLE CURSE very much -- take two bundles of Agatha Christie and update with a shake of very British humor and a sauce of affection, and you've got the feel of it quite well. Moreover, I was delighted to find in the final chapter that there's another Colin Pendragon investigation in the wings via Kensington Books: The Dalwich Desecration. Shelve these with mysteries that are friendly, warm, and cleverly twisted in plot, while avoiding gore or dramatic abuse -- in other words, put them on the "read it now and read it again later to relax" shelf. That's what I'll do with mine.

THE CURSE OF THE HOUSE OF FOSKETT, M. R. C. Kasasian: Victorian Dark Humor and Crime

THE CURSE OF THE HOUSE OF FOSKETT is the second in the Victorian England crime-solving series of detective Sidney Grice and his ward -- and although reading the first book, Murder in Mangle Street, isn't actually necessary, it would save you from the errors that dogged my reading of the first few chapters. Grasping right away that the novel resembled a grim Sherlock Holmes reality show (dirt, spoiled food, discomfort), I assumed Grice's ward was male, like Watson. It wasn't until the third chapter that I realized this "March Middleton" narrator was female. As you can tell, it shook the universe my "reader's eye" had been constructing.

But I kept thinking I was in the midst of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche -- recognizing phrases like the "engineer's thumb" for example -- for a few more chapters. In fact, I felt as though I were on the far side of a train window, trying to make sense out of lip-reading half of a conversation. The stunningly nasty comments that detective Sidney Grice makes, his often-described infected eye socket with glass eye, the grotesque conditions and bluntly described dirt and stench of this "world," and March Middleton's unfortunate slowness to catch on to the plot twists (Grice isn't a lot faster) kept me dog-paddling in a lake of misunderstanding for a long time.

And yet ... I couldn't stop reading. A reviewer of the first book said it hadn't appealed much to the heart, and that's probably just as true for this one -- trust me, you don't want to identify with anyone in these pages! -- yet March Middleton has a stubborn persistent courage, even though she has little other choice, and I liked her gradual assertion of her own worth and her outreach for some kindness in her gray, grim life. She rarely pauses to feel sorry for herself -- there is too much going on. Grice is being paid to step into a "death club" where he cannot stop the deaths from taking place, and he quickly decides the whole disaster is actually all an attack on him -- which March can clearly see fits his vanity.

Kasasian's writing is fluid and his images and plot twists are vivid and surprising. Once I'd managed to let go of all Holmesian expectations, I found the rather shocking scenes to be freshly surprising:

The moment we appeared our visitor jumped up and grasped my guardian's hand.

"Mr Grice. It is such a thrill to meet you. I have read so much about you in the newspapers."

"You will have been hard pressed to find an accurate fact then," Sidney Grice told him.

"And you must be Miss Middleton." Mr. Green compressed my hand in his. "I believe you helped Mr. Grice solve the Ashby stabbing case."

My guardian adjusted his eye. "She may have accompanied me on that case," he said, "but I can assure you she was nothing but a hindrance. Ring for tea, Miss Middleton."

"I shall try my idiotic best." I pulled the bell rope twice as the two of them sat facing each other, then got myself an upright chair. ... "I can smell something," I said, but both men ignored me.

The further I read, the more parallels I found to having fallen down a rabbit hole, or having met a very dark version of Jasper Fforde -- literary allusions, outrageous metaphors, symbols and clues that mean something far different from first impression. If you've read the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, you know it's far more vicious than the cartoon visions. So is the gruesome Victorian England in which Grice and March Middleton investigate.

And that, finally, makes this one of the more original and surprising mysteries I've read recently! Recommended for those who want to move beyond the Holmes we've known, to the brute necessities of his time and place -- but not for the faint of heart, and definitely not (despite the attractive cover) for any young impressionable readers who might carry the book's nightmare qualities into their sleep.

[No author website at present, but an insightful interview with the author here.]

Speaking of Independence ... Hattie Davish Turns Sleuth in Victorian Newport, Rhode Island

Anna Loan-Wilsey's third Hattie Davish mystery is in print! A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT follows A Lack of Temperance and Anything But Civil, and we connect with Hattie in her role as a "social secretary" in the town where so many wealthy American families established "cottages" the size of mansions, and mansions the size of housing developments. Hattie wears her role in town with independence yet some unease: She's accustomed to being treated with appreciation and dignity by her employer, but when Sir Arthur abruptly must leave the summer resort, trusting Hattie to complete typing his manuscript and then take some well-deserved vacation (for her first time ever), Sir Arthur's less kindly wife turns the tables on Hattie, shopping her out as an upper-level servant to the extremely wealthy Mrs. Charlotte Mayhew. Scratch the vacation. Forget being held in esteem. Suddenly Hattie's hard-won independent lifestyle is gone, and Lady Phillippa has the power to enforce the change.

"Yes, spoiled," Lady Phillippa asserts of how Hattie has treated Sir Arthur's writing career. She continues, "Why else do you think he hired you back after that fiasco in Arkansas? ... And you're lucky he did too or your reputation would've been sullied by the scandal. And then again in Galena? What kind of ill luck do you have, girl? Obviously, Mrs. Mayhew knows nothing about your dealings with the murders and we're going to keep it that way, right?"

And that's the stick: Lady Phillippa can ruin Hattie's reputation and toss her out if she so chooses, so Hattie takes the new (if demeaning) assignment. But it's not ill luck that brings Hattie into murder investigations: It's her capable intelligence and calm trustworthiness, and soon she's applying her investigative skills on behalf of her new employer, Mrs. Mayhew, with another murder investigation underway.

Loan-Wilsey is a gifted storyteller and careful historian (her background before writing involved being a librarian and information specialist), and in A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT she provides a rattling good traditional "amateur detective" mystery with a wonderfully authentic set of "women's issues" from the years not so long ago when women couldn't even cast their votes. Softer in tone than the war-era mysteries of Jacqueline Winspear, Loan-Wilsey's series shows the same adept ear for dialogue and dilemma, with a plenty of adventure and an American sense of justice. A very good series to collect and enjoy, especially for summer reading!