The Hidden City (Charles Lenox Mysteries, 15)
In 2007, Charles Finch introduced the Victorian gentleman-detective Charles Lenox, a character as endearing as a reader could desire. Not as well-versed as Lord Peter Wimsey, Lenox shares a profile with Dorothy Sayers’s much-loved, self-styled detective: second son of titled gentry who does not need to work but studies crime detection, has an exceptional assistant in a man servant at his side, an older brother as lord of the family estate, and a woman he faithfully loves and eventually marries.
Lenox lives to solve mysteries in London while reading history, visiting Parliament, and probing into its affairs. Finch portrays London with a progressive-minded tip of the hat to the social morality of Charles Dickens, while engaging readers who prefer intimate circles, even as his detective is solving gruesome, diabolical murders or taking down the aristocracy just a tad.
The previous novel, An Extravagant Death (2021), returned to the series main timeline (following three prequels) with Lenox’s trip to post-Civil War America ending in a near-fatal injury.
In The Hidden City, Lenox is still recovering from the brutal stabbing and is oppressed by it. Nevertheless, he takes on his former housekeeper’s request to solve a cold case murder, which baffles him. At the same time, he welcomes a cousin from India, struggles to accept his wife’s embrace of the women’s suffrage movement, mentors his detective agency, and steers his
physician friend toward sobriety.
Finch’s plotting and character studies are driving forces, set off by tangential history and etymology lessons. Recurring cups of tea, a book before a bright hearth, quotidian details of life, and a rainy English climate compose a chorus of refrains. A crime detective pure of heart and sound in his integrity is almost a luxury, and it lingers in the mind, anticipating the next turn of a decade.
