Review
Having written a collection of short stories about detective work in the Victorian East End, this is of course going to catch my eye, which it did eventually on a Tower Hamlets library shelf. (And the Whitechapel branch, no less.)
This is the second novel by TV producer, Claire Evans, although both stand alone. (I haven’t read The Fourteenth Letter, her first, but might be tempted to pick it up in the future.) There are some acknowledgments at the back to Victorian history and culture scholars, and it certainly captures some of the late-nineteenth-century’s anxieties about sex, class, and business. The corruption of the justice system runs alongside the corruption of the young, and where better to set this than the East End? Set a few years before the Ripper murders, we are at least spared references to those sensational crimes, but Evans invents some of her own, in particular the sexualised murders of two 15-year-old boys, five years apart.
Our protagonist and amateur detective for investigating these two cases is Micajah (Cage) Lackmann, a bought-and-paid-for barrister working for a Ukrainian crime boss. While the East End’s history of Jewish immigration and Eastern European immigration (often but not always overlapping) is fascinating, little of it makes it into this novel. Instead, we are largely to turn our interest towards the more titillating topics of prostitution, homosexuality and the molly house (although more predominant in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, e.g. Miss Muff’s), and the creative arts, particularly the publication of poetry (Cage is “The Poet of Whitechapel”) and the rise of photography as an accessible activity for many. There could be lots of material culture points of interest here too, then, for a Victorianist, but they are also buried, used more for props in Evans’ world-building.
The first 50 pages or so I found a little grating. I was not especially interested in Cage’s interest in red wine and blonde prostitutes, although his actress mother, Honor, provided a sparkle of interest. As the plot gets going and this ostensibly well-to-do professional has to do more and more of his own dirty work, the book rattled along reasonably well, but the main character of Cage never quite settled as a fully formed thing. I was most interested in the vicar, Archie Weston (having written about East End churches and bishops in The Meinir Davies Casebook).
The murder of two young boys, apparently as part of a homosexual tryst, and concern with Cage’s career as a corrupt barrister are odd thematic focuses for a novel that by the end declares itself to be about the revenge that wronged women might take on the men who break them (or threaten to). It’s hard to know what to make of the volte face except that the novel was trying too hard to incorporate too many of the plot points it thought should be included in 1880s historical fiction.
A a final aside, it was a slight shame to see Highgate the cemetery of choice here for when we did need to turn to actual graves, given that Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is literally right there. This fascinating East-End cemetery was opened before Highgate and also one of the “magnificent seven” Victorian cemeteries. It would have fit the bill rather more, given the title of this book, but alas gets not a mention.
See also
These lists capture other stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- Ripper Street (TV series)
- Without Prejudice (Nicola Williams)
- The Worst Street in London (Fiona Rule)
- Taboo (TV series)
Take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now! Or check out my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available) right here.
Dominique Gracia 
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