A Golden Grave: A Rose Gallagher Mystery
Second in the Rose Gallagher series after Murder on Millionaires’ Row, this mystery features Rose, a recent inductee into Pinkerton’s, whose talent is to detect shades. The story revolves around the 1886 election for mayor of New York. Six people are mysteriously murdered at a rally, and Rose and her partner, the reserved English gentleman, Thomas Wiltshire, are sent to investigate. The target appears to be Theodore Roosevelt, a primary candidate for mayor at the time. There’s no obvious cause of death, the autopsies are covered up by the crooked police chief, and the complex trail of clues is followed not just by Rose and Thomas but also by Nikola Tesla, Jonathan Burrows, Mark Twain, and a number of other notable figures of the day. I found Tesla’s role particularly intriguing. All these people plus a number of the lesser characters have ‘luck’ which surrounds them in an incandescent aura-like glow. Tesla makes various devices for Rose to help her to detect the aura in the vast high-society soirées to which she and Thomas are invited.
I haven’t read the first in this series but will look for it now. Steeped in late 1800s detail, the writing is fluid and everything, right up to Tesla’s weird experiments, is well researched and explained with clarity. The idea that Rose, from a poor Irish background, has made it from maid to Pinkerton agent requires a leap of faith, but the anomaly is easily offset by the singular relationship developing between Rose and Thomas, which the author’s words excel at realizing. Readers will want more in this mystery series and more for this unusual couple.
