This mystery is set in a Victorian London swathed in smoggy fog with omnibuses pulled by horses, railways clattering by, steamboats on the Thames, smoke filled pubs and posh squares lined with newly built townhouses. The London of an evolving Scotland Yard when ‘case files’ were considered a novel policing technique and women riding bicycles was considered risqué, when men routinely wore top hats and women perched small hats on their heads and wore elaborate dresses with bustles. The heroine is also a novelty a single woman journalist working on Fleet Street for a daily paper. She is struggling to survive after a career setback and is offered a lifeline by a young Scotland Yard inspector who needs her insider knowledge to assist him in solving the scandalous murder of a famous actress, Lizzie Dixie, whom she was friends with. Penny Green agrees to help only if she is re-instated at her old job and she tries to balance her own sorrow with her desire to find justice for her old friend and Annie, her daughter. Penny’s connections in the theater world gain access for her and the inspector to meet with the Drury Lane theater proprietor Sebastian an early supporter of Lizzie and Lizzie’s husband an overbearing successful showman in the style of a P.T. Barnum.
The shadowy world of politicians and courtesans and ladies of the evening is an intriguing sub-plot where Lizzie had a reputation and was rumored to have been involved with a famous statesman. Penny’s sister Eliza is another interesting character, a wife and mother who is a member and proponent of the causes of the North London’s Womens Society, a progressive group of middle-class women who meet and discuss women’s right to vote, wear more sensible clothing, and lead more independent lives; that group indirectly plays a part in solving the identity of the murderer in a timely way later in the story.
Penny is a quiet but endearingly relatable character, she’s polite in the manner of a bygone society when phrasing and niceties were prized but she is also sensible and sensitive skewing clear minded and determined then turning muddled and discouraged, a modern working woman in spite of her corsets! The mystery is just that, a mystery inside a mystery. The murder is theatrically gruesome, the actress shot to death in a graveyard, but the shocker is that she was supposed to be dead having drowned in a shipwreck over 5 years ago. Where was she for those 5 years and who knew that she was still alive. In addition to that there are no real clues but there are motives, all involving the actress’s romances. Because of the range of settings and depth of detail it’s a slow-paced story but I did not find it boring or tiresome but enjoyed the historical details and thought it succeeded in bringing the past into the present.
Overall, the story is well written, subtle in its depiction of Penny and it successfully evokes a London slowly evolving from the coal fogged atmosphere towards a more modern era but still bound to the old mores and social structures. The mystery is a puzzler, not that it is so difficult or arcane, instead it is true to human character and the final clue teases with one meaning and then another. The ending is melodramatic and was a sensational resolution to a baffling mystery. I suspected the motive and murderer, but I was only partially right and was misled by many of the clues mostly due to the way the narrative unfolded which points to a first-rate mystery.
I rate this mystery 4 East India Sherrys using elements from the book!
Plot: ****
Characters: ****
Setting: ****
Romance: **
Humor: **
Social themes: ****
