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What
happened at Ford's Theater one night in 1865 is history, and
Captain Matthew Grand just happened to be there with his fiancée
when Lincoln was shot. Grand tries to catch John Wilkes Booth
but fails, and instead is drafted by two government agents
to go to London to find the missing conspirator. Grand has
encountered this man and will not forget his voice, but once
in London he soon discovers how totally huge the place is,
and alien to somebody only used to the States. Meanwhile,
Telegraph reporter James Bachelor ends up getting arrested
for the murder of a prostitute he met only a short while earlier.
Soon the two are forming an alliance to stop the Haymarket
strangler and find the missing assassin.…
I have been a fan of Trow's historical crime fiction since
the first Lestrade book, and am pleased to have discovered
another new series by this talented author. This one hits
the ground running with Lincoln's assassination, and Trow
manages to bring immediacy into this history book event with
Grand's bystander outlook. At times it seems as if there are
two stories running concurrently that do not have a lot to
do with each other, and I felt that each one would have filled
a book on its own. The more interesting of the two has to
be Grand's mission, as there are already a great many stories
about prostitutes getting murdered in foggy London streets
and this is just one more. A different type of murder would
have maybe brought the same freshness to Batchelor's investigation,
as Trow manages to give to Grand's, and certainly it is the
latter plot strand that stands out. There are also some fine
thumbnail sketches of the various characters, including the
Lestrade-like Tanner and many instances of Trow's trademark
dry wit. We are treated to some excellent descriptions of
the lively newspaper office and various theatres, from Ford's
to a London performance by the Great Maskelyne. There is a
lot to enjoy in here, and now the preliminaries are out of
the way I will look forward to reading more about these two
sleuths.
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