Publisher's Weekly Review
With the excellent fifth outing for amateur detectives Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins (after 2021's Spring of Hope), Harrison approaches the level of ingenuity that's been a hallmark of her Reverend Mother and Burren series. Collins, who feels his best-known works have been eclipsed by Dickens's literary success, is still delighted to get an invitation to spend Christmas with the Tale of Two Cities author's family at their country home in Kent. The other guests include Timmy O'Connor, an Irish raconteur whom Dickens met in Cork on a recent reading tour, and three of O'Connor's nephews. Collins's hopes for a stress-free holiday are dashed when a guest is found beaten to death near the local church. The violent nature of the murder leads Dickens to suspect the killer is a convict from the prison ship docked near his home, but Collins wonders if a less obvious suspect is responsible for the fatal bludgeoning. He eventually turns the inquiry toward Dickens's guests. Harrison never lets her cheeky premise distract from her heroes' exhilarating detective work, and the ingenious solution to the mystery makes this the series' best entry yet. Victorian whodunit fans are in for a treat. Agent: Peter Buckman, Ampersand. (Dec.)
Booklist Review
Harrison presents another entertaining, atmospheric book in her Victorian Gaslight series featuring renowned authors Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins playing amateur sleuths. When Dickens visited Cork on his Irish book tour, he met Timothy O'Connor and his four strapping but oddly silent nephews. The always hospitable Dickens invited the men to visit him if they ever came to England--and they do. So, in addition to Dickens' usual full house of Christmas guests, O'Connor and his nephews are there for the festivities. But during a break from a vigorous walk on Christmas Eve at a remote church on the bleak marshes, O'Connor's body is found at the bottom of a hill, his head bashed. As Collins, with insights from Dickens, probes O'Connor's life for a motive, he learns the man was an unscrupulous, mean-hearted moneylender who had many victims and enemies, among them some of Dickens' Christmas guests. Determined to solve the case, Collins soon finds himself drawn into a strange, dark tale of cruelty, greed, and revenge, and readers will be as shocked as he is by the identity of O'Connor's killer.
