Between the recently released Sherlock Holmes movie and the new film, The Young Victoria, everything Victorian is suddenly in demand. A Foreign Affair, the first book in a Victorian mystery series by Caro Peacock, begins in England at the moment of Victoria's ascent to the throne. Receiving word that her father has been killed in a duel in 1838 England, Liberty Lane, who knows her father would never have taken a part in such an act, sets out to catch his killer and takes on a government assignment to pose as a governess and move in with an influential and sinister family.
In the follow-up, A Dangerous Affair, Liberty’s attempt to settle down to a quiet life is thwarted by a public rivalry between two beautiful dancers that culminates in a poisoning murder of one and a death sentence for the other.
Publishers Weekly says “Peacock skillfully interweaves figures of real Victorian London, while avoiding the genre's typical focus on aristocracy.”
Library Journal recommends the series for readers who love historical mysteries similar to Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series.
The series will continue in 2010 with A Family Affair.
Peacock previously penned the Nell Bray mysteries under the name Gillian Linscott.
For a Victorian mystery actually written during the period (1862), try Lady Audley’s Secret by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Bradden. The story follows Robert Audley as he tries to find out what happened to his friend George Talboys, and just who his uncle's wife, Lucy Audley, really is.
This book established Bradden as the main rival of Wilkie Collins. A protest against the passive, insipid 19th-century heroine, Lady Audley was described by one critic of the time as "high-strung, full of passion, purpose, and movement.”
A Library catalog search of the subject Victorian mysteries will yield over 200 titles, and you can sort these out in author order to make a fine bibliography of some of the best Victorian mysteries by contemporary writers, including Anne Perry (her Monk and Pitt series), Edward Marston (his Richard Colbeck series), Peter Lovesey (his Cribb and Bertie series), and Sally Spencer (her Blackstone series, written as Alan Rustage).
If you like your mysteries on the cozy side, you will be happy to know that Susan Albert Wittig, writing as Robin Paige, has a late Victorian era series featuring Kathryn Ardleigh, an American writer of the frowned upon "penny-dreadfuls," and Sir Charles Sheridan, gentleman detective.
Victoria Sponge Cake, anyone?
