A Twist of Murder

[cornerofmadness]

A Twist of Murder by Heather Redmond

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A friend gave me this one and I could tell it was later in the series. I was conflicted by this one. As a mystery it's not bad. As feeling like this is Charles Dickens solving a mystery? Not so much. Then I thought about it. I don't know that much about Dickens' life and realized that my real issue is the characters are all rather flat and one note.

Charles is off to the country with his friend and fellow journalist (who I assume has solved mysteries with him in the past) William. William's father runs a small school and that's where they've sent John, Arthur and Ollie, three young mudlarks who they saved from a brutal newbie taking over the Thames (assuming this happened one if not more books ago) while their friend Lucy is now maid to William's pregnant former actress of a wife. Charles wants the boys to have a better chance at life, hence the school.

Charles is there because the boys have disappeared and once he's there, Agnes the young maid and William's cousin, is found dead in the ice house after flashing a 'treasure map' all around the school. So naturally Charles helps him discover who killed Agnes. Into this Julie, William's wife, Lucy and Kate, Charles' fiancée all show up to help.

There are plenty of suspects, the less than stellar headmistress, the drunk groundskeeper, the cruel new partner of William's father, fresh from running workhouses, the student who was far too interested in the map, her own brother with psychopathic tendencies, the weird, mysterious curate and why exactly did her father send her to the school rather than keep her on at the nearby farm?

Once Charles does find his three young mudlark charges and gets the skinny on the Mr. Aga's new mean partner, he stays on because of Agnes. And on top of this is cholera which sort of bugged me mostly because some of the details were right and others were...blurry. Redmond goes on and on about the victims making rice water but it sounds more like it's from vomiting. It's technically rice water stools, so yeah this is death by diarrhea. She is right though about keeping a patient hydrated to keep them alive and right about the fact it was a 50/50 chance of dying. Cholera was a killer in that time period as they had no idea what it was and how it spread.

Over all, like I said the mystery isn't bad but the only thing that made it feel like Charles Dickens is you can identify future characters, oh look there is Scrooge and Cratchit and there's Limbkins and Oliver Twist etc. It was cute but man, I really wanted more depth to these characters.



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