Last Nocturne
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Publisher Description
Private detectives Grand & Batchelor's latest case draws them into the arcane world of high art and high society in this compelling Victorian mystery.
London. May, 1878. Private enquiry agents Matthew Grand and James Batchelor have been hired by the artist James Whistler to dig into the past of outspoken critic John Ruskin, with whom he has an ongoing feud. Not particularly optimistic of success, the two detectives are sidetracked from the investigation by the murder of a prostitute in nearby Cremorne Gardens. Her body posed on a park bench, a book on birth control sitting on her lap, Clara Jenkins is not the first young woman to have met a similarly grisly fate - and she won't be the last.
Could there be a connection between the Cremorne killer and their art world case? With the investigation heading nowhere fast, Grand comes up with a decidedly unorthodox plan to ensnare the killer. But even the best-laid plans have a nasty habit of going catastrophically awry ...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1878, Trow's mediocre seventh mystery featuring inquiry agents Matthew Grand and James Batchelor (after 2020's The Black Hills) opens with an unidentified man poisoning Clara Jenkins, a prostitute, in London's Cremorne Gardens with a piece of cake, before leaving a copy of a controversial book on birth control in her lap. Jenkins's murder is the second such killing in 18 months. Grand and Batchelor begin looking into the case, which involves interviewing John Meiklejohn, the disgraced and convicted former inspector who handled the prior case, in which another prostitute was posed with a copy of Moby Dick. Meanwhile, James McNeill Whistler wants the pair to look for dirt on critic John Ruskin, whom Whistler is suing over a negative review of one of Whistler's paintings. The two investigations eventually overlap, but not in a clever way, and chance leads to the apprehension of the killer. The author's depictions of real-life characters, including Oscar Wilde, aren't particularly memorable. Trow has been more consistent in his other series.
