The Hidden City

Charles Lenox, detective in Victorian London, has been with readers now through 15 adventures, starting as a rank beginner but gaining a stable family life and a thriving agency with a range of detectives covering all sorts of cases. He is set to meet his cousin’s daughter, who’s arriving from India after her father’s death, as he has been named her guardian. He is drawn out of recovery from his last perilous case by his old housekeeper and a strange connection to an unsolved murder from years ago, with the “why” far more important than the “who.” As in the previous novels, the mystery is important, but it is the setting of Victorian society and mores that makes it all come alive. Times are changing though: Charles’s wife, Lady Jane, is demonstrating in public for women’s suffrage and his niece wants to study economics, but as yet class and status rule over all. Traveling through London with Charles and his cohorts is a treat, and the next excursion is likely to be as well.