November 7, 2022
Set in 1891 London, Rowland’s disappointing seventh Victorian mystery (after 2022’s Garden of Sins) depends on an improbable premise: Sarah Bain Barrett and two colleagues who are “crime photographers and reporters for the Daily World newspaper, covering mainly the East End,” have a special arrangement with the police: in exchange for publicizing police investigations to help them “catch killers,” the Daily World is given confidential information. Barrett hopes this arrangement will help crack a serial killer case after a woman’s body, apparently the latest victim of the Thames Torso Murderer, washes up at her feet while she’s covering an accident on the Thames. But the officer in charge, Insp. Edmund Reid, who believes that the Torso Murderer and Jack the Ripper are the same and that Barrett is withholding information about the Ripper, cuts her newspaper out of the inquiry. Aided by her husband, Thomas, a detective sergeant conveniently assigned to Reid’s Torso Task Force, Barrett and her colleagues search for the truth. The plot construction and characterizations fall short of the standard set by the author’s superior Sano Ichiro series. Historical mystery fans can safely pass. Agent: Pam Ahearn, Ahearn Agency.