Winter of Despair

May 1, 2019
Famous author and amateur sleuth Charles Dickens has struck up an unlikely friendship with budding writer Wilkie Collins, whose ambition is to become the next Dickens. But before that can happen, the pair are drawn into a tragic murder case in which the victim, Isabella, was a former resident of Urania Cottage, a home for young women down on their luck and of which Dickens is a patron. The rebellious Isabella left the cottage with her friend Sesina, and the pair found jobs as maids in a London boarding house. The night she died, Isabella told Sesina she was going to meet a man who would give her the life she had always dreamed of having. Of all the cases in which Dickens has been involved, this is one of the most byzantine. Just when he and Collins think they know who Isabella's killer is, they find they've been lured into pursuing false leads. 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2020
In Harrison's engaging historical-mystery series, Victorian authors Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens are paired as a detective duo who occasionally assist police with baffling cases. Their latest case (following Season of Darkness, 2019) concerns the murder of painter Edwin Milton-Hayes, who's found in his London studio, his throat slit and his latest painting slashed. Scotland Yard inspector Field, aware that Collins' younger brother, Charley, is a friend of Milton-Hayes', asks Dickens and Collins for assistance. The pair soon discover that the painting destroyed during the murder is one of several, all featuring acquaintances of the artist in scandalous situations. To his shock, Collins sees that one of the paintings shows his brother in a torrid embrace with a young married woman. That gives Charley a clear motive for killing Milton-Hayes. But those featured in the other paintings might also have been blackmail victims?and killers. Setting out to clear Charley, the novel-writing sleuths find something stranger (and more shocking) than fiction. Another strong entry in a series tailor-made for the Masterpiece crowd.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 4, 2019
Harrison’s stellar second Gaslight mystery improves on 2019’s Season of Darkness. In 1855, authors Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, who are close friends despite their differing levels of literary success, are strolling in London when they’re summoned to a murder scene by the real-life Inspector Field, who inspired Dickens’s Inspector Bucket in Bleak House. The victim is Edwin Milton-Hayes, an artist who was slashed to death in his studio by someone who also vandalized a painting of his titled Winter of Despair. Collins has a personal connection to the dead man, who was scheduled to dine at his home and also knew Collins’s artist brother, Charley. The studio contains four other paintings with ominous titles such as The Night Prowler and Root of All Evil. With Charley a prime suspect, Collins and Dickens team up again to investigate, pursuing the theory that Milton-Hayes was blackmailing the people depicted in the five pictures. Superior plotting and characterization lift this entry. Fans of Harrison’s Burren mysteries will be pleased. Agent: Peter Buckman, Ampersand Agency (U.K.).

November 1, 2019
Now that they've bonded over the writing life and homicide investigation, eminent Victorian Charles Dickens and eminence-in-training Wilkie Collins tackle a second case of murder. No one thinks Edwin Milton-Hayes was a particularly outstanding painter. So why did whoever slashed his throat in his studio take the trouble to slash one of his last paintings, as well? The answer, Dickens swiftly decides, is that Milton-Hayes, whose plummy name isn't the one he was born with, was a blackmailer with a novel approach. Paintings like The Night Prowler, Forbidden Fruit, Taken in Adultery, Den of Iniquity, Root of All Evil, and Winter of Despair, commissioned by the monumentally clueless Canon Rutter, showed compromising situations in which Milton-Hayes' society acquaintances had placed themselves, with the actual portraits of subjects, like talented young artist Walter Hamilton, flirtatious wife Molly French, schoolgirl Florence Gummidge and her mother, gallery owner William Jordan, and his wife, Helen, to be revealed later unless the painter's financial demands were met. What's particularly alarming to Wilkie is that his troubled younger brother, Charley, seems to pop up everywhere Wilkie and Dick look--making Inspector Field, of London's Detective Force, all but certain that Charley is the killer. As in the Victorian sleuths' debut (Season of Darkness, 2019), Harrison alternates chapters narrated by Wilkie, who's constantly fretting over his lack of progress on Hide and Seek, his second novel, with distinctly less successful third-person chapters presented from the viewpoint of Sesina, the fearful, impressionable, curious Collins housemaid. Sadly, Dickens himself cuts a much less impressive figure this time, playing a supporting role till the very last minute, when he's on hand to pull a rabbit from his hat--a surprise that no doubt pleases him as much as his readers. More ingenious than Season of Darkness but altogether less striking. Best wait and hope for two out of three.

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