Murder by Lamplight
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
As a deadly cholera pandemic burns its way through Victorian London in the winter of 1866, a trailblazing female physician and a skeptical Scotland Yard detective reluctantly team up to stop a sadistic killer in this dark, atmospheric, historically rich mystery for readers of Andrea Penrose and Deanna Raynourn.
“Enthralling debut. . . Mystery, pulse‑pounding suspense and a budding romance. More, please!”—Mary Jane Clark, New York Times Bestselling Author
November 1866: The grisly murder site in London’s East End is thronged with onlookers. None of them expect the calmly efficient young woman among them to be a medical doctor, arrived to examine the corpse. Inspector Richard Tennant, overseeing the investigation, at first makes no effort to disguise his skepticism. But Dr. Julia Lewis is accustomed to such condescension . . .
To study medicine, Julia had to leave Britain, where universities still bar their doors to women, and travel to America. She returned home to work in her grandfather’s practice—amid London’s devastating cholera epidemic. Yet in four years she’s seen nothing quite like this—a local clergyman’s body sexually mutilated and displayed in a manner that she—and Tennant—both suspect is personal.
Days later, another body is found with links to the first, and Tennant calls in Dr. Lewis again. The murderer begins sending the police taunting letters and tantalizing clues that lead from London’s music halls to its grim workhouses and sewers. But as Lewis and Tennant struggle to understand the killer’s dark machinations, there is a new urgency. For the doctor’s role appears to have shifted from expert to target. And this killer is no impulsive monster, but a calculating opponent, determined to see his plan through to its terrifying conclusion . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McDonough's run-of-the-mill debut finds a pioneering female physician in Victorian England enmeshed in a murder mystery. A legal loophole allowing doctors with foreign accreditation to practice medicine in England has benefited Julia Lewis, who's recently returned to London after completing medical school in the United States. She gets a chance to put her training to use when her grandfather, Dr. Andrew Lewis, is unable to fulfill his summons to a gruesome crime scene at a construction site, and Julia takes his place. There she meets Scotland Yard Insp. Richard Tennant, who shows her the corpse of Reverend Tobias Atwater, "a tireless champion of the downtrodden" who's been found dead with his genitals mutilated. Atwater proves to be the first in a string of savage slayings linked by a punctured balloon concealed in the victims' clothing, one of which contains a note that casts doubt on Tennant's arrest and execution of the infamous Railway Killer several years earlier. Terrified that the Railway Killer is still at large and impressed by Julia's observations in the Atwater case, Tennant recruits her to help him solve the recent murders. McDonough delivers a competent whodunit, but little about the characters or the setting is memorable. Readers intrigued by the premise of a historical mystery centered on a woman physician should check out E.S. Thomson's Jem Flockhart series for a fresher take.