Dark Dawn Over Steep House

Starred review from October 2, 2017
Kasasian’s fifth Victorian-era novel featuring “personal detective” Sidney Grice and Grice’s ward, March Middleton, shows him back at the top of his game after 2016’s disappointing The Secrets of Gaslight Lane. Geraldine Hockaday, the daughter of a high-ranking War Office official, was raped by a wealthy German nobleman, whom the police apprehended as he was dragging Geraldine down an alley in London’s East End. She reported her assault to the police and was prepared to testify in court against the attacker, but her father threatened to institutionalize her if she did not drop charges. This outrage prompts Geraldine’s brother to ask Grice to get justice for his sister. After a typically cryptic prologue, March, an astute investigator, notes that one of the many tangled threads essential to understanding Geraldine’s rape and her father’s actions relates to the murder of a respected retired surgeon, Anthony Lamb, three years earlier. Lamb had his skull bashed in with a funerary vase while visiting his family’s plot in a London cemetery. The twisted solution to the case ranks as one of the series’ most terrifying, and classic whodunit fans will appreciate Kasasian’s playing fair with them.

October 1, 2017
A Victorian detective with a unique style and the ward who doubles as his assistant track down a serial rapist.Sidney Grice--"the finest personal detective in the empire," as he announces himself--is a man of impossibly high standards, extraordinarily keen senses, finicky personal habits, a relentless devotion to the truth that outweighs all tact, a tendency to lose his glass eyeball at inopportune times, and little regard for women apart from Connie Middleton, the mother of his ward, March Middleton. March herself is ever the butt of Sidney's scorn, and he also wastes little patience on his latest client, Lucy Bocking, who was assaulted, beaten, and slashed. Sidney is scarcely more sympathetic to Lucy's friend Freda Wilde, hideously disfigured by fire and left without relatives when Steep House, her family home, burned down. Lucy's house next door escaped the fire, and she took in Freda as a companion--and a rather resentful one at times, because her wounds, unlike Lucy's, will never heal. The chief suspect in the assault, the German Kaiser's second cousin Prince Ulrich Schlangezahn, was implicated in an earlier rape. March tries in vain to entrap him in the same opium den where Lucy and Freda were attacked. A second attempt with some of her friends goes terribly wrong, and a related case of a missing person ends in a shocking mutilation. The only bright spot in March's life is Inspector George Pound, who finally proposes to her. Although she gladly accepts, she can't seem to find the chance to tell her guardian, for they're both too intent on capturing the man who has stalked numerous women in London and marked their foreheads with a sinister symbol. The outcome will leave more than a few readers feeling repulsed and betrayed.In their fifth adventure, Kasasian's mismatched detective team (The Secrets of Gaslights Lane, 2017, etc.) is in fine form for fans who like convoluted plots, lovingly detailed gore, and mean-spirited humor. The squeamish should approach with caution or not at all.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from November 1, 2017
Even Hagop Hanratty's ironhanded control of Victorian London's East End can't prevent criminals attacking young women near his highly touted (and largely illegal) establishments, despite his boasts to the contrary. To capture the monster who assaulted two women of her acquaintance, March Middleton traces their path back to an opium den and lies in wait (literally) with disastrous results, much decried by her rude and decidedly nonempathetic guardian, personal detective Sidney Grice. March can handle attacks on herself but cannot countenance further abominations aimed at her friends. The women hatch a plan, but they seem overmatched against a vicious slasher. By this point in the series (a rollicking blend of mystery, historical fiction, and coming-of-age novel), readers expect Grice's blunt insults, March's disregard for personal safety, and, of course, the intrusion of bloody violence into the otherwise cozy enough domestic setting. This time, though, nothing can prepare readers for the visceral shockers and nightmarish images that pepper the narrative. Luckily, the one-liners, Dickensian names (Sergeant Crook), and snarky turns of phrase are somewhat comforting. Stakes are high in this game of who dies next, which is one of the darker entries in Kasasian's Gower Street series, but nonetheless compelling for its mood change. Fans should also try Oscar de Muriel's Frey and McGray novels and Will Thomas' Barker and Llewelyn mysteries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)