Murder by Lamplight (A Dr. Julia Lewis Mystery)
In November 1866, Dr. Julia Lewis is called to examine a corpse in the last unfinished section of London’s new sewer project. The man was killed by a knife to the heart, his body mutilated sexually after, a popped balloon stuffed in his waistcoat pocket. The victim, a clergyman, was known as the Saint of Spitalfields.
Days later, investigators find a popped balloon in the pocket of a banker who’d been bludgeoned to death two years before, proving the truth of the first of a series of letters written to Chief Inspector Richard Tennant in purple ink: You hanged the wrong man. The letters continue as other bodies turn up – a pair of transvestites, the director of East London Waterworks, a nurse, a workhouse warden – and each contains a line from the children’s tune “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Murder by Lamplight is McDonough’s debut novel and the first of a series. It is a stellar mystery, balancing the step-by-step collection of evidence and clues with the ruminations of the observant letter writer and leading, at least for this reader, to the gasp-inducing yet wholly believable identification of the perpetrator.
The book also details everyday life and ever-present disease among the tenements, describing the work of the Inspector of Nuisances, who leads teams to evict tenants and disinfect premises after a typhoid victim is found; the reluctance of city officials to admit cholera is spread via water, and the devastating consequences; and Julia’s own work alongside her grandfather and fellow doctor in their clinic. Characters are engaging and multi-layered: Julia and Tennant are challenged by incidents in their past, and Constable Paddy O’Malley adds a bit of poetry to his spot-on observations. Brilliant.
