A Murderous Malady
A Florence Nightingale Mystery
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- ¥2,400
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- ¥2,400
発行者による作品情報
The second Florence Nightingale mystery, set in Victorian London—a perfect read for fans of Charles Todd and Deanna Raybourn
Cholera has broken out in London, but Florence Nightingale has bigger problems when a murderer leaves an even bigger pile of bodies.
The London summer of 1854 is drawing to a close when a deadly outbreak of cholera grips the city. Florence Nightingale is back on the scene marshaling her nurses to help treat countless suffering patients at Middlesex Hospital as the disease tears through the Soho slums. But beyond the dangers of the disease, something even more evil is seeping through the ailing streets of London.
It begins with an attack on the carriage of Florence’s friend, Elizabeth Herbert, wife to Secretary at War Sidney Herbert. Florence survives, but her coachman does not. Within hours, Sidney’s valet stumbles into the hospital, mutters a few cryptic words about the attack, and promptly dies from cholera. Frantic that an assassin is stalking his wife, Sidney enlists Florence’s help, who accepts but has little to go on save for the valet’s last words and a curious set of dice in his jacket pocket. Soon, the suspects are piling up faster than cholera victims, as there seems to be no end to the number of people who bear a grudge against the Herbert household.
Now, Florence is in a race against time—not only to save the victims of a lethal disease, but to foil a murderer with a disturbingly sinister goal—in A Murderous Malady.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Trent's well-researched sequel to 2018's No Cure for the Dead blends Victorian political and cultural mores with a tidy mystery. It's August 1854, and a cholera epidemic is ravaging London's Soho district. Florence Nightingale's exalted friend, secretary at war Sidney Herbert, calls her away from her duties as superintendent of the Establishment for the Temporary Illness of Gentlewomen in Harley Street. Sidney informs her that the carriage that was carrying his wife and father-in-law has been attacked and the driver killed. Sidney, who is loath to tell the police for fear of creating a scandal, asks Florence to investigate. A short while later, Herbert's manservant, Fenton, arrives at the nurse's door suffering from cholera. Among the last words Fenton utters before he succumbs to the disease are "devil's dice." The varied settings, from the mansions of the wealthy to the pitiful hovels of the poor, add depth to the narrative. Readers will look forward to Florence's next outing, which will take her to the Crimea.
