“The house was not large, for a family of such means, but its isolation gave a stark grandeur to its appearance. It rose from a promontory overlooking the dunes, and might have served at one time as a seaside villa. There was a faded elegance still about its arches and mullions, but it had fallen into neglect. Years of salt air had roughened its stonework, and its gables were discoloured by lichen and rust.”

This book was really fun; I enjoyed the plot, characters and writing style. It’s a clever, supernatural mystery set in 1893 London. A seamstress leaps to her death and other young women are disappearing, without much notice from Scotland Yard until Lord Strythe also goes missing. The disappearances lead to parallel investigations. The newspaper reporter, Octavia Hillingdon starts making inquiries, aided by her brother Georgie and her snide friend Elf, who has secret governmental connections. Gideon Bliss is a divinity student from Cambridge who is present at the disappearance of one of the women. “But she was staring past him, her scream a hoarse rasp as the rag was clamped to his mouth. He was slowing then, even as he began to struggle, clawing emptiness and breathing only the strange deep sweetness now, remembering nothing else. He saw her once more, as he was hauled up, the sense almost gone from things. He saw it, or thought he did. The brightness of her. The brightness of her, and then the dark.” Bliss manages to insinuate himself in the investigation by Inspector Cutter. They find more disappearances, deaths, visions and spiritualists.

Each of the three protagonists is intelligent and articulate. Cutter, in particular, has an amusingly sarcastic take on the proceedings. It also turns out that Cutter has a particular interest in the case. I loved Cutter and the somewhat prickly relationship he developed with Bliss. “And it’s only now comes out that when you found the same woman dead in the street, you shovelled her up and took yourself off to bed and did not trouble yourself to report the matter to Her Majesty’s police until this morning. I have never heard the likes of it. Bliss, have you ever heard the likes of it?” “There is not much, Bliss, that you do not know how to say. It is more in the shutting off of the valve that you are inclined to struggle.”

I hope there will be a sequel to this, but it was originally published in 2018 and there are no signs at this time that this will become a series. I listened to the audiobook and the narration by Charles Armstrong was excellent. He brought a lot of personality to the characters.

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the publisher.