Death at Hungerford Stairs

Starred review from November 2, 2015
In this sequel to 2014's The Murder of Patience Brooke, Briggs not only makes plausible the concept of Dickens as a detective but also evokes the author's gift for describing the plight of London's poor. In 1849, Dickens and his policeman friend, Supt. Sam Jones, are searching for a missing boy, Scrap. They fear the worst when word reaches them that the corpse of a child has been found in an abandoned blacking factory at Hungerford Stairs, a building in which Dickens himself worked as a youth. The friends are relieved that the body is not Scrap, but after an autopsy reveals that the little boy was murdered, they resolve to find his killer, who left an odd and creepy chalk drawing of a man with a mask at the scene. The whodunit is compelling enough, but Briggs's real triumph is the creation of secondary characters who could have come straight out of Oliver Twist and whose fates will tug at readers' heartstrings.