Charles Dickens as Sleuth

It is the first of May 1851, the day the great exhibition and the Chrystal Palace is opened by the queen and prince-consort. During this opening, a Chinese junk captain poses as a mandarin envoy from the Celestial Court. With all the threats of anarchist complots and previous attempts on the queen’s life, this indiscretion is seen as very serious by those in law enforcement but a joke to the newspapers. Another Chinese man, first thought to be the mandarin’s secretary, disappears. Not much later it’s brought to the attention of Superintendent Sam Jones of How Street that a well-connected banker and formerly a merchant in Canton, has also gone missing. This disappearance must be treated with the utmost discretion and tact and Mr Jones asks for the help of his good friend, the writer Charles Dickens. A few days later, Mornay’s murdered body is found in the river near Wapping. Soon it becomes clear that he had a second family and was also involved in the opium trade. Many questions and secrets but no easy answers. The opium merchants and others with ties to Canton have ties to the highest echelons. That’s why the prime minister insists on secrecy and discretion but is it possible that those forces will stop a proper investigation. It looks as if Dickens falls into a hornet’s nest



This is already the 8th book in this series and the relationships between the main characters is long-established. You can read this as a standalone; the relevant events from the past are shortly explained without being boring to the long-term fans.

The fact is that I read another book from another author (a Christmas carol murder by Heather Redmond) last year that also had Charles Dickens as the protagonist albeit him being still unmarried there and still an aspiring journalist. Here he’s already a famous and established writer with fans from every walk of life. At the start of the story, he comments on and shows his disdain for Disraeli’s writing.

Just as in Dickens- own novels, there is a very large cast of characters and the most complex family and business relationships from the past that now come to the horizon. What I thought funny the first time but rather strange when it happened a second time is that Mr Dickens meets people that look and behave like characters from the books he has already written. For one of those, we get an explication at the end of the story. In the other book, it was the other way round, he meets people that end up (somewhat altered) in his stories. The 2 books are very different but nevertheless of equal quality and I’ll have to look out for both series.

I don’t know enough of the real Charles Dickens to say whether or not he’s portrayed just. He appears a bit too good to be true; a loyal and helpful friend, a brilliant investigator with handy acquaintances in all walks of life, unjudgmental and rather modern in his opinions and moral compass. I’ve read other accounts that weren’t very happy with his behaviour towards women, but it’s all hearsay and I’m not in a position to judge that. I remain a huge fan of his books though and no-one can deny that those had a huge impact, not only on literature but on society as a whole.

Well, as they say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, here I really was seduced by the lovely artwork on the book. It conveys the atmosphere from the period but also this little closed black door can hide so many sins and secrets.

In this book, the murder mystery takes precedence over the time period. Not that there are mistakes or inconsistencies but I didn’t have that feeling of being transported to the Victorian age. If you change opium with heroin, the story could happen here and now without having to alter much else.

There are some brilliant descriptions of the huge gap between the circumstances and lives of those in opulence and those without anything at all.

I couldn’t really connect with the main characters in this book. They did and said all the right things but I didn’t feel a passion. They felt more like actors than real people and sometimes the conversations feel a bit artificial. That may be the case because the author tries to imitate the speech pattern and idiom of the period. However, there are some delightful minor characters of whom Scrap is the first. I have to read the other books to find out what his backstory is.

An interesting conversation takes place between Dickens and the inspector’s young daughter who’s a firm supporter of the new fashion of women wearing bloomers because she wants to ride a bicycle.

A big theme in this story is the moral hypocrisy of the period. Everyone who traded with the East had Indian or Chinese concubines but no-one should mention them or put them in the public eye, let alone marry them. What were they supposed to do about their offspring, their own sons and daughters with a foreign mother? Let them fend for themselves? At least Mornay and his brother looked after their children. His English son reacts very selfishly to our modern morals but it was a general sentiment at the time, I guess. Another point of ethical conflict is the huge amounts of money made from the opium trade and the disdain for the users and addicts. And I mean that opium was just everywhere, even is baby soothing medicine!

It was definitely a decent book with an interesting crime mystery and storyline. It was a bit too much stretched out and slow-moving at the start. The last third of the book is a lot faster paced and things really start happening and get very suspenseful as well with a chase through a bricked-up plague house and the sewers.

At the end of the book, there is an extensive list of characters. I wish they put those at the beginning of e-books or tell you that it is there as you may not find out until you get there. There is also a very interesting author’s note with historical justifications and details about Dickens’ life and works.

I thank Netgalley and Sapere Books for the free ARC they provided and this is my honest and unbiased review of it.