A more fun book this week than usual, a Victorian mystery/thriller about a girl who has inherited a criminal empire from her grandmother and must learn how to use her new power wisely. But as she is coming into her own, her long lost brother asks her to shelter a child, and she soon finds out that there is more to this baby than meets the eye, especially when the murders start piling up!

This book is the second in a series, but although it alludes to previous events, it doesn’t give much away, so you don’t need to have red the first book, nor will it spoil the first book.

Although I often felt myself rolling my eyes at the characters foolish choices, this book is really good. Griffin does an excellent job of evoking a whole time period, especially the milieu of the criminal underworld and the London Barons, who ruled areas of London. I liked the way that she writes sympathetically about the characters, and the way that the gay or cross-dressing characters are just people, not under or over written. It explores the side of London’s history that was rarely talked about in novels of the time, and although it’s about the criminal underworld, it’s drama is not based on grotesquery or sensationalism.

The story moves at a good pace, with the mystery elements unfolding slowly, but the action moving swiftly. It’s a good read, and I plan on looking up the others in this series too.

Read It If: you like a good mystery or the underbelly of Victorian London. It’s a good read.