Dance on Blood

This is an amazing series and Nell Bray is one of my favorite protagonists.  Nell Bray is strong, thoughtful and passionate; brave but still highly relatable.  She is an accidental detective but the mysteries always involve her work as a suffragette in London in the early part of the last century.

The suffragette setting is a highly compelling backdrop for Gillian Linscott’s stories and she fully exploits it to add flavour and plot devices to the mystery.  The suffragettes are often only a footnote in the history of this tumultuous time and Gillian Linscott really brings into to focus the frustration and desperation many (mainly white and middle class) women felt during the era.

Because this is a series, Nell Bray can guide us through the different stages of the movement, highlighting the non-homogeneity of the membership’s methods and motivations.  Not glamorized, the suffragette movement is drawn to display the complex decisions and trade offs required to participate in Politics.  The history is well researched and every included detail adds to the story and the reader’s understanding of the time period, which is a true achievement.

Beyond the setting,  the 7th mystery in this series is interesting and complex enough to keep you guessing, or at least interested for those who are blessed/cursed with being able to always guess the murderer right away.  The added layers of Oscar Wilde, Salome and the opera world help to give insight into the dominant values of the time and place and made me want to reread all of Wilde’s work.

Reading these books makes me realize how much we take suffrage for granted, only 30% of Vancouver’s registerd voters went to the polls in our last municipal election.  It is a good thing that people cannot imagine a democracy without universal suffrage but it is sad to think that the work of so many before us might be forgotten.  A mystery that can make me think about all of this while keeping me completely entertained: I would call that a gem.

Murder in Little Italy

Murder in Little Italy is the 8^th book in Victoria Thompson’s Gaslight Mystery series featuring Sarah Brandt, a midwife in turn of the last century New York City. I have read books from this series in the past and I really love the characters and the setting. Thompson’s books are filled with complex and interesting characters and stories that take place outside the luxury of the elite worlds so often portrayed in historical novels.

Sarah Brandt is one of my favorite protagonists; she is smart, independent and caring and has dedicated her life to working with marginalized women. In many ways she defies the norm of the glamorous women often written about, while perfectly fitting into the mold as a member of one of New York’s most prominent families. This rejection of class and gender roles seems to be an important theme in many of the books I read and the Gaslight Mysteries are no exception.

Thompson also did a terrific job bringing the reader into the dark and dirty streets of New York through well researched and interesting details. The creation of a robust setting is the real accomplishment of this book and the author’s love of history is clear and enjoyable to read. Thompson manages to weave details about daily life, especially in terms of child birth, into the story without the reader feeling lectured or bored. This book takes us into Little Italy and highlights the waves of Italian and Irish immigrants into NYC at the time and their relationship with Tammany Hall, which was notoriously corrupt.

It is a good thing that the characters and setting are so well written because the story is lacking in complexity; I guessed the major secret of the book within the first 20 pages and I knew who the murderer was a good 100 pages before s/he was revealed. This is pretty ridiculous and I admit to being a bit frustrated but I still liked the book, and I have enjoyed others in the series, so I can still strongly recommend this book to those interested in a dynamic cast of characters and a compelling location.