Tangled Web UK Review June 2008
The Mesmerist's Apprentice by
L M Jackson
hbk out April 08
Published by Heinemann
at £14.99
L M Jackson, who also writes as Lee Jackson, lives in London, and is obsessive about Victorian London. His first book, London Dust, was shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, and was followed by several more stories based in London. One of these, A Most Dangerous Woman, was the first Sarah Tanner mystery. This is the second.
Sarah Tanner, a woman of enigmatic origins, has reopened her New Dining and Coffee Rooms, with the assistance of maid, Norah Smallwood, and waiter, Ralph Grundy. Unfortunately, her trade is threatened when a flash boy – a member of the Brass Band – claims her hashed beef is made with horse-meat. Her butcher is also accused of selling horse-meat, and is in great danger from an angry public. Sarah attempts to discover why these false accusations are being spread, and why someone has walked into a local cheese shop and offered to buy the whole stock. Could it be something to do with the waste paper used for wrapping in both establishments that appears to have come from a lawyer’s office? When the clerk at Mr Wilmot’s law firm is horribly murdered, Sarah thinks she is on to something.
Meanwhile, her former lover, Arthur DeSalle, has married someone from his own class, but is now asking Sarah to help with a puzzling problem. He gets Sarah to follow the nurse of his gravely ill father to see what her background is. This leads not only to a suspect Mesmerist called Dr Stead, but to a connection between the nurse and the flash boy, Jem Cranks. The more Sarah digs into these matters, however, the more her life seems at risk.
Jackson displays his complete and compendious knowledge of Victorian London, recreating scenes from Mayfair drawing-rooms to dingy backstreets and spectacular sights such as the Vauxhall Gardens. The style of the writing is matched by the physical appearance of the text on the page, carrying the reader back to the end of the nineteenth century. A sense of period drips from every page, with discreet trysts between gentlemen and boys, the expert use of disguises by Sarah which is reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, and other fine detail throughout the weave of the tale. To suggest the ending is a little laboured and drawn-out is but a minor cavil. The whole is delightfully entertaining, with period gloom and London fog seeping out of every turned page.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
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