Oxford’s
Ashmolean Museum hires private investigator Daniel Wilson
and his partner, Abigail Fenton, to look into the death of
a staff member. Gavin Everett apparently committed suicide
in his office by shooting himself, but something looks wrong
to administrator Gladstone Marriott, so he hires the pair
to look into it. Soon there is also a Special Branch member
nosing around and rumors of a possible connection to the Boers
in South Africa, plus a lost Shakespeare play. The deeper
the investigators dig, the more they uncover about the late
Mr Wilson…
After
finding the first in this series rather disappointing, I was
pleased that the second proved to be a real page-turner. This
third entry is even better, so I do hope that we haven’t
seen the last of Daniel and Abigail and their museum related
mysteries. I used to live in Oxford and know the Ashmolean
well, so was interested to see how late Victorian Oxford would
be described. Without too much infodump, it provides a believable
backdrop to the story; more detailed description would probably
have slowed down the action. There is plenty of this, with
the pair racing around finding out more about the case on
each page, as, like all the best mysteries, the tale starts
with nothing known about the murder, moves along to the red
herrings and then spreads out even wider.
Romance
takes a back seat again with the protagonists a definite item,
but in business as much as in pleasure. It is a comfortable
relationship with them getting on well together, which makes
a welcome change from the overused “battle of the sexes”
arguing that features in a lot of books with sleuthing couples.
Also avoiding clichés is their relationship with the
Oxford police, who are helpful and just want the case sorted
out rather than being desperate to solve it first. I would
certainly read another in this series if they keep on being
as good as this, and I hope this series runs and runs.
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