Kirkus
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A private detective balances family obligations with a challenging new case. Well-bred and well-connected Englishman Charles Lenox, still recovering from having been stabbed on a trip to the U.S., is waiting in Portsmouth in the winter of 1879 for the arrival of the daughter of his beloved cousin Jasper, who lived and died in India. It takes him a while to find Angela when her ship arrives—it turns out that she’d exchanged her first-class ticket for two third-class tickets so that her lifelong friend Sari could accompany her. Lenox has received a letter from Elizabeth Huggins, who cared for his bachelor rooms when he was in his 20s, asking for his help—the previous resident of her rooms died in a suspicious manner, and she believes she may be in danger. Soon after he and the girls return to London, Lenox and his friend Graham meet at Mrs. Huggins’ apartment along with her nephew, Ernest, who owns a nearby pub. They learn that her building was the scene of the unsolved murder of a chemist whose rooftop garden Mrs. Huggins still enjoys using. Someone’s taken up sleeping in the building’s entryway, and she and Ernest, who think the squatter is linked to the murder, suspect it’s Jacob Phipps, whose late wife was a patient of the chemist’s, though he’s supposedly left for Australia. They find scratches around the keyhole of the front door and what appears to be a backward letter K entwined with a straightforward F carved in an inconspicuous spot. Leaving the girls’ entry into London society to his wife, Lady Jane, Lenox and his agency pursue several leads, including the mysterious carvings he finds on other nearby buildings. Despite continuing pain and weakness from his wound, Lenox uncovers a strange plot that leads inexorably to London’s high society. A fascinating, dangerous mystery. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.