The Unquiet Dead
Amelia Matthew works as a spiritual medium in a fashionable New York City nightclub in 1893. She and Jonas Vincent, a young man who is a bouncer in the club, met as orphans and have always looked after each other. They learn that the five-year-old daughter of wealthy parents has disappeared. When the child’s body is discovered, the police charge a fifteen-year-old youth with the crime. The boy is the son of an African American waiter at the nightclub, so Amelia and Jonas get pulled into the murder investigation. They work with a lawyer who is in a relationship with Jonas, a doctor who wants to be in a relationship with Amelia, and a reporter who tries too hard to get the story. The reporter discovers that the murdered girl is the most recent in a long string of child murders. The other victims, children of immigrant parents, have been forgotten. Readers will find portents of the identity of the killer but won’t know for certain until the conclusion.
As Amelia, Jonas, and the others search for answers, they wander through rank jails, squalid neighborhoods, society dinner parties, and a commercial laundry experimenting with new equipment. Murphy skillfully evokes the feel of the neighborhoods, the new technology of the era, and especially the smells of the crowded city. She conveys the biases of people of privilege—not only the obvious prejudices but subtler ones as well. The Unquiet Dead is closely tied to Murphy’s 2021 book, A Deadly Fortune, and at first references to that earlier story may seem excessive. But The Unquiet Dead stands on its own as a quick, satisfying, well-crafted, and enjoyable read.
