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Inspector Bucket of the
newly formed Detective Department housed in Scotland Yard
has a new and challenging case on his hands. The respectable
Dr. Scambles has been imprisoned for murdering one Edward
Mizzentoft, and his distraught wife Eleanora insists that
he is innocent. This is not Bucket’s case but that of
his colleague the flamboyant“Flash”Billy Stope
but following the mysterious theft of valuable ferns from
a nearby house he becomes involved. Keenly aided by new recruit
Mr. Gordon, the heir to an Earldom, he is determined to find
out who the real killer is.
I do hope that this is the start of a new series, as there
is much to recommend this novel. The fog-bound, grimy streets
of Dickens’ London come to life, as the wryly-humorous
Bucket and his noble but naïve sidekick sally forth to
discover whodunit. Not many novels are set in the 1840s and
I have never read one about the founding of Scotland Yard
so there is also the added bonus of originality, something
much needed in yet another book about Victorian London. There
is an interesting feeling of much as yet uncovered in the
background of both the detectives and as the interlinked cases
started to gather momentum I was gripped. It is not easy to
add much to such as popular time to set mysteries in this
one succeeds in being pacy, entertaining, by turns amusing
and tragic and possessing some sense of the decade in which
it is set. I would certainly read another, and look forward
to finding out more about the pair if more titles in the series
are forthcoming.
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