American author Charles Finch has taken a fresh approach to his long-running Victorian mystery series featuring an aristocratic ex-member of Parliament who finally takes up his long held ambition to become a private detective.
This prequel, set some twenty years prior to the original series, gives us a look at the young Charles Lenox, just come down from Oxford and taking up residence in London. As the younger son of a baronet, Charles has no preordained occupation --- his brother Edmund is the heir to their father's title and estate. As a gentleman with a private income and a university degree, however, the range of socially acceptable occupations for Charles is actually quite limited: the Army, the Church, government service such as the diplomatic corps or a seat in Parliament, or (just barely beginning to be tolerated) some very discreet connection with investments in the City.
But Charles, to the dismay of his family and friends, is fascinated by crime. So when he finds a letter published in one of the London tabloids, in which the writer boasts he has committed the "perfect"murder, and intends to murder again in one month, so that people are forced to pay attention, Charles takes it as a personal challenge. He and his valet, Graham, connect the boastful letter to the body of a young woman found strangled inside an old trunk washed up on an island in the Thames. So far the police have failed to identify the victim, much less her killer. Lenox pulls strings to see Sir Richard Mayne, the Commissioner of London's fledging police force at Scotland Yard. His offer of assistance is initially declined, but when a second murder does occur, and Lenox is able to prove that it is linked to the first, Mayne offers him a role in the investigation.
Click HERE to read an interview with the author talking about The Woman in the Water.
Click HERE to read the review in Publishers Weekly.
Click HERE to read the review in Kirkus Reviews.
Click HERE to read the review in the Washington Post.
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