A decent enough procedural mystery, with added drama (and length) in the form of a theater group performing Hamlet, the protagonist's alcoholic brother, their formidable aunt, and other side stories. Plenty of readers will enjoy it, but it wasn't my cup of tea--too many stock characters, motives, and scenes.

" Edinburgh Dusk" by Carole Lawrence might be an interesting book for the lovers of Victorian period fiction novels. It mixes real and imaginary characters in a quite unusual setting. I feel that the strong female character in the period setting is somewhat overdone and not sure how it really fits the period.

The book is on the darker side in my opinion, the language is a bit uneven and some parts of the book are going faster than the others ( possibly because it is a mystery).

I would like to thank the publisher, "Thomas & Mercer" for the free advance reading copy of the book.

I enjoyed this novel and will now seek out the first Hamilton novel, Edinburgh Twilight. I loved the way the book ended with a sense of “To be continued…” and it worked for me! I shall watch out for any other novels by Carole Lawrence in the future. I’m afraid I guessed the murderer part-way through, but that didn’t detract from the book at all. It was well-plotted and was definitely a page-turner as far as I was concerned. I had to read it in a single sitting.

It was great to have such very strong female characters in a Victorian novel. And having looked up Dr Jex-Blake on the Internet, that strength is highly believable too – even better! Sophia Jex-Blake fought for the right to be admitted to read medicine at Edinburgh University in 1869. When she and six other women began to show that they could compete on equal terms with male students, they became subject to acts of hostility, culminating in a riot by an angry mob of over two hundred people when the women arrived to sit an anatomy exam. She would indeed have been practicing in Edinburgh when Conan Doyle was a medical student at the University, studying under Joseph Bell. And it sounds like she was as abrasive as Carole Lawrence describes her. One can imagine that such assertiveness rubbed off on her staff, supporting the believability I mentioned earlier.

Criticisms? Two points, occurring in Chapters One and Two, really irritated me, I’m afraid. Firstly, after a lifetime of reading authors who refer to their detectives as Holmes, Watson, Poirot et al, the author’s calling her detective by his first name, Ian, seemed an anachronism. Secondly, the sergeant scrambled to fetch his own coat from the rack and doffed it. No he didn’t! “Doff” means to take off, not to put on! That made me question the author’s knowledge of contemporary language – does she really know it or is she using words that she feels should be used in Victorian novels?

We later hear that Frankenstein “was much in vogue in Edinburgh”. Given that Frankenstein was published in 1818 and the novel is set in 1880, I wondered why it was in vogue so long after being published. Did something happen in 1880 to make people return to the novel and re-read it?

Vickie Carruthers’ accent was puzzling. Phrases like “Did ‘im in” and “I’ll do whatever I can t’ketch his killer” sound more Cockney than Edinburgh-like. And I’m unconvinced that an elderly Victorian Scots lady would say “I’m working the clothing booth at the charity jumble sale tomorrow” any more than a Victorian teenager would chew beef jerky. Both manning the clothing stall and chewing air-dried raw beef may have taken place in 1880, but not using those American descriptions. Finally, I would have thought that if the detectives were walking from the station in the High Street to the Cowgate, they wouldn’t be “skirting” the Old Town, they’d be walking through it, wouldn’t they?

I’m conscious that such points are nit-picking and I’d like to emphasise that I enjoyed the book despite them, hence the four stars. However, given the level of research the author exhibits in using real-life people like Henry Littlejohn, Sophia Jex-Blake and, of course, Joseph Bell and Arthur Conan Doyle, to further the narrative, the points do grate. The novel is highly atmospheric and I often felt I was there in an Edinburgh autumn. Then I’d be brought up short by something that just didn’t feel right. I recognise that an American author is quite at liberty to write in American, rather than British, English, but it does destroy that period feel that she has so beautifully built up. Given that a number of reviewers have made similar comments about the anachronistic Americanisms in Book 1, it’s disappointing that the author and her publisher haven’t paid heed to that feedback.

I'll post this review on Amazon.co.uk on publication date

This was a late addition to my NetGalley TBR pile. It's the second in a series which is set in 1880s Edinburgh and involves Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton and the first I've read.

I'm rather enjoying historical mysteries at the moment and this fit the bill nicely. The relationship between Hamilton and Dickerson is a bit Holmes/Watson-like (although I'm not sure if the author was going for this). We meet the young medical student, Arthur Conan Doyle, who strikes up a friendship with Hamilton during the course of the investigation into several murders that involve different types of poisons. There is potential here, so I hope this continues (this could be where the 'Holmes/Watson' aura comes from).

Hamilton's 'thing' is quoting Shakespeare which gets tiresome, as do the 'quote battles' with his superior officer, DCI Campbell. Tropes like this can be frustrating because it feels more like the character/author is showing off rather than being well-read/mysterious, which is what I think was the intended purpose. But that's just MY 'thing'.

At least he can utilise some of his love for Shakespeare when he gets roped into a role in the local production of Hamlet.

I found the English characters sounded the same, despite being told they were from different counties, and there was a vague, overall feeling of it feeling 'Americanised' with a few too-modern idioms from one or two characters (would a policeman in 1880 have used the phrase 'totally brilliant'?).

Outside of that, however, I enjoyed it and read it steadily over the course of a couple of days. It was engaging and a bit dark, which Edinburgh can be, even in the summer. I'm invested enough in the characters that I'd like to continue the series.

**grammar niggle: 'doffed' means to remove; 'donned' to put on.

Edinburgh dusk by Carole Lawrence is a great story. The plot is flawless and the characters feels like so real. I haven't read the first series though I was able to catch up the plot very easily.. The writing was so nice and I loved this book very much. I recommend this novel to those who loves to read mysteries.

Edinburgh Dusk is also a second in a series by Carole Lawrence. After a perfectly ugh prologue, the book improved. It is better than the first book in the series, although I didn't review the first book here.

I love Edinburgh so I couldn't help giving the series another try. While I did like this one better (aside from the yucky prologue), I still couldn't quite get a feel for Ian Hamilton.

The Hamlet trope was way overdone.

Favorite character: Conan Doyle is a secondary character that will probably be in the next book as well. We even get a cameo appearance of Dr. Bell, Doyle's mentor.

Reviews of Edinburgh Twilight ran the gamut from one to five stars on Goodreads (I gave it a generous 3), but so far the reviews of Edinburgh Dusk are positive, but I'm giving it another generous 3 stars. Since twilight and dusk are synonyms, maybe one should have had a different title. I don't know that I'd try another in this series.

NetGalley/Thomas & Mercer
Historical Mystery. Sept. 18, 2018.

I received an ARC via NetGalley, thank you! All opinions are my own.

Edinburgh Dusk is a historical mystery that takes place in 1880. Ian Hamilton is confronted with a horrific poison murder. I haven't read the first novel in the Ian Hamilton Mysteries series, but I was able to follow the story anyway - still, now I want to read the first one, too. The plot is gripping, the characters so vivid, that they seem to have a life on their own, even if I close the book - and the cameo of a certain medical student named Arthur Conan Doyle utterly fascinating. I really enjoyed this and will follow this series from now on.

I really enjoyed this book! It kept me guessing to the end! It reminded me of the Alex Grecian novels.

5 stars

It’s 1880 in Edinburgh, Scotland and winter season is just beginning.

Doctor Sophia Jex-Blake comes to the police station and reports to DCI Bobby Crawford and DI Ian Hamilton that she has located a murder victim. He was killed by arsenic poisoning. She had been treating his wife for a pregnancy. The victim’s name was Thomas Carruthers. He was known to have affairs, although it is uncertain if his wife knew.

DI Ian Carmichael Hamilton and his partner Sergeant William Dickerson set out to the morgue to examine the body of the victim. He had, indeed, died of arsenic poisoning. So begins the investigation.

When another man is murdered, this time with strychnine the woman he was with give Hamilton and Dickerson a name and an occupation. Since the house he died in was a bordello, the name and occupation might not be real. It turns out that he was, indeed, a banker and his name was >>>>>.

After an altercation in a pub, Hamilton is knocked unconscious and taken to the Royal Infirmary. There he meets Arthur Conan Doyle who is in his last year as a medical student. He likes a good detective yarn and exchanges ideas with Hamilton.

The story is interspersed with vignettes of what is going on in the murderer’s mind and visions of her childhood.

Then another person is murdered. This time it is a woman; the woman the last victim was with at the time of his death - Big Margaret. It turns out that she was drugged before she was put in the water. Jed, a somewhat unsavory in interfering reporter, is kidnapped. Derek McNair, a street urchin, thief and a “friend” of Hamilton’s reports him missing. Derek plays an important and big role in the story. As the police start looking for Jed, they find him in a ramshackle building, obviously under the influence of some drug. Arthur Conan Doyle, who figures large in this story, revives him.

This is a great story. The writing is flawless and flows along so nicely that the reader doesn’t realize that the pages are flying by. There are no wasted words in the novel. I liked the relationships between Hamilton and his partner, Dickerson, and Aunt Lillian, Hamilton’s brother Donald and the cat Bacchus. I just can’t say enough about the book; it’s wonderful!

I want to thank NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for forwarding to me a copy of this absolutely great book to read, enjoy and review.