Part of Lady Sherlock
First published 2020
Inspector Treadles sits locked in a room with two dead men and says nothing. The men both worked at the manufacturing company his wife recently inherited, and the silence he keeps is doing him no favors. Charlotte Holmes takes the case. The evidence stacks up against Treadles fast: the dead men had blocked his wife's decisions at every turn, and whispers suggest he may have suspected her of feelings for one of them. Charlotte works through a tangle of lies and hidden histories in Victorian England, separating the small dishonesties people tell to protect themselves from the larger secrets that could crack open someone's past entirely. The emotional weight of the story sits with Charlotte as she tries to save a friend who refuses to help himself, in a case where the truth, once found, may cost more than the silence already has.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, mystery, crime, adult-fiction, detective
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotionally-complex, introspective, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, locked-room-mystery, unreliable-protagonist
Setting: Victorian England, Cold Street
Period: Victorian era, 19th century
344 pages · Paperback · Berkley
Content warnings: death, murder