Season of Darkness - (Gaslight Mystery) by Cora Harrison

About the Book

Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins team up after a housemaid is dragged from the River Thames in this new Victorian mystery series. The woman was being blackmailed, but by who and why? The woman's friend, Sesina, discovers only fragments of the woman's journal... but is she withholding information or doomed to end up like her friend?

Book Synopsis

Introducing Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins as an unusual detective duo in the first of a brand-new Victorian mystery series.

When Inspector Field shows his friend Charles Dickens the body of a young woman dragged from the River Thames, he cannot have foreseen that the famous author would immediately recognize the victim as Isabella Gordon, a housemaid he had tried to help through his charity. Nor that Dickens and his fellow writer Wilkie Collins would determine to find out who killed her.

Who was Isabella blackmailing, and why? Led on by fragments of a journal discovered by Isabella's friend Sesina, the two men track the murdered girl's journeys from Greenwich to Snow Hill, from Smithfield Market to St Bartholomews, and put their wits to work on uncovering her past.

But what does Sesina know that she's choosing not to tell them? And is she doomed to follow in the footsteps of the unfortunate Isabella ...?

Review Quotes

'A surprising conclusion, coupled with vivid characters, authentic period details, and a constantly zigzagging plot, makes this a good choice for fans of historical murder mysteries.'-- "Booklist"

'The real triumph is Harrison's Dickens; sublimely conceited, short-tempered, self-dramatizing, often bombastic, and perfectly matched with the infinitely less self-assured Collins.'-- "Kirkus Reviews"