The Fleet Street Murders by Charles Finch is the
ideal Victorian outing for readers who prefer their detective novels pretty much free of gore, violence,
swear words, and sexual escapades. The upper-class amateur sleuth, Charles
Lenox, is a likable aristocrat who has a knack for treating people from all
levels of society with respect. He is carrying
on a courtship with Lady Jane Grey that is so chaste that it would seem downright
amusing if it were not taking place in Victorian London.
There are two plots and both, thankfully, can easily be kept
track of. Mr. Lenox is running for a seat in parliament in Stirrington, a
fictional location well to the north of London. This gives you the added opportunity
to soak up details of how by-elections were run in those days. Meanwhile a
mystifying double murder of two newspaper men in London keeps drawing Lenox back
to town to grapple with a villain who he has wanted to pin multiple crimes on
for years.
Finch gives you the just right amount of local atmosphere to
make his country settings come alive and they are populated with the kind of wonderfully
quixotic characters that always seem to inhabit them. On the city side, anyone
who has read London history or visited the city, will revel in Lenox’s visits
to Berry and Rudd, Wine merchants and the famous Cheshire Cheese public house
just off Fleet Street.
This is the third Lenox mystery and like a cup of warm cocoa
before bedtime, it will bring a sense of cozy satisfaction. I am going to search out the first two.
Jim De Young
12/11/22
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