The Man in the Shadows

August 1, 2022
Clare's latest, following Magic in the Weave (2022), is set in 1880s London and features private investigator Lily Raynor and her associate, Felix Wilbraham. Recently, Lily and Felix have endured a surfeit of cases involving cheating husbands among London's wealthy, so they're pleased when two very different cases come their way. The first is to find Yakov, a Russian boy who, with his grandmother, has recently arrived in London, hoping to escape the terrible violence in Russia. Yakov holds the family fortune--a purse of diamonds and gold--but he's disappeared, and his grandmother fears the worst. The second case has dockworker Jared Spokewright asking Lily and Felix to prove the innocence of his brother, Abel, who was hanged a year ago after being accused of murder. Clare provides an intriguing look at English life in the nineteenth century, buoyed by an engaging plot and two richly developed leads. Fine reading for fans of English historical mysteries.

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June 20, 2022
Set in 1881, Clare’s unremarkable third World’s End Bureau mystery (after 2020’s The Outcast Girls) finds Lily Raynor, the London bureau’s owner, feeling unfulfilled by affluent clients seeking incriminating evidence against their spouses, despite the recent uptick in business. Then she gets a request from the Rev. Mr. James Jellicote, a friend who runs a mission for the needy, to search for a missing child. A Russian Jewish woman Jellicote has been helping, who fled pogroms in her native country, is distraught that her 11-year-old grandson, who came to England with her, has disappeared. Lily dives into the case, while her friend and assistant, Felix Wilbraham, agrees to help Jared Spokewright, whose younger brother was hanged the previous year for strangling the milkmaid he’d been courting. Jared is sure his brother was innocent, and Felix travels to Kent to try to confirm that belief and finger the real killer. The twin plot lines are entertaining enough, but in a crowded subgenre they’re not particularly memorable. Maisie Dobbs fans interested in a similar series set during the Victorian era may want to check this out. Agent: Sophie Gorell Barnes, MBA Literary (U.K.).

June 15, 2022
In 1881 London, the World's End Bureau takes on two wildly different cases. After a slow start, sleuthing partners Lily Raynor and Felix Wilbraham are slowly building a reputation and a clientele that are not always to their liking. Now they're approached by a minister who's working with a flood of Jewish refugees fleeing Russia after the assassination of Czar Alexander II; he asks them to help an elderly woman whose whole family perished in the pogroms except for her young grandson, Yakov, whom she brought with her to London but who seems to have run away when she was taken to the hospital straight off the boat. A second case involves Jared Spokewright, who insists that his brother, Abel, was wrongly hanged for the murder of the sweetheart, Effie Quittenden, he met while hop-picking in Kent. Posing as a journalist, Felix heads for Crooked Green, where, as it happens, he has a relative, part of the extensive Smith family, while Lily goes to Whitechapel to speak to the Russian grandmother. Virtually everyone Felix meets tells him that Abel was innocent, encouraging him to seek out other suspects. Meanwhile, Lily finds that she's taken on a very dangerous mission. Yakov is running for his life, pursued by dangerous elements of the Russian secret service who know he carries something more precious than the gold and jewels his grandmother had given him to guard. Industrial London and rural Kent provide the Victorian backgrounds for two fascinating stories of love, hate, and madness.

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