2007 historical mystery, fourth of Shaw's series. In 1898, Vanessa
Weatherburn investigates a young woman whose body was found floating
in the Cam.
This is a very oddly disjointed book. The investigation leads,
with only minor coincidence, to the identity of the victim, but
Vanessa's theories always run well in advance of her data, she
publicly accuses the wrong people, and generally she does a lousy job
of investigation. What I think was meant to be the climactic puzzle –
how could information have got from person A to person B at a
particular time, given that they have no telephones – might have been
more of a mystery if the inter-chapter vignettes hadn't been talking
about the childhood experiments of a boy named Guglielmo.
Other threads go nowhere. Vanessa enlists an assistant, who vanishes
as soon as she's delivered a bit of information. She digs into the
parlousness of theatrical life, then goes away again and all the setup
is ignored. She goes to a séance, but does not become either a
believer or a debunker; she just doesn't seem terribly interested. I'm
particularly interested to note that Arthur Conan Doyle appears here
(and is rebuked by the "spirit" for having killed off Sherlock
Holmes), because it was explicitly established in the first book that
in this literary continuity Sherlock Holmes is a real person…
The historical research is decent, and since the author is American
she can be forgiven for the unfortunate coincidence of having a
character called Geoffrey Archer living in Grantchester. The Author's
Message, which seems to be becoming obligatory in these books, is
about the status of women and especially of prostitutes. That said, I
find Vanessa's freedom to act – even with an entirely understanding
husband – somewhat implausible. I'm only an amateur historian of the
period but I get the impression that most of the men – and women – she
talks to would simply have refused to take her seriously.
Followed by Fatal Inheritance, but after two major disappointments
in a row in this series I have no plans to read more.
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