S. M. Goodwin pulled me into Crooked in His Ways immediately just as she did the first book in the series, Absence of Mercy. As a physician I enjoyed her descriptions of Jasper Lightner, a Crimean War hero with post-traumatic stress syndrome and a traumatic brain injury—and am fully aware of how lucky he was to have survived in those pre-Civil War days when there was no such thing as a sterile procedure. The second son of a cold-hearted duke, Jasper inherits enough money to become independent of his father and begins working as a Detective Inspector on London’s Metropolitan police. In 1857 Jasper is sent to New York City to train American policemen on investigative techniques. Some time later, still in the States, he is sucked into another grisly murder, that of a blackmailer. Even he feels challenged when the list of victims—and thus suspects—surpasses one hundred.
Goodwin has created some marvelous characters, both major and minor, and populates them in a NYC that rings true to the times with pre-Civil War politics and Tammany Hall. Jasper faces both American fascination with and prejudices against titled Brits, the latter of which survives though the Revolutionary War ended some eighty years earlier. Though Jasper predates Sherlock Holmes by some years, he too has an addiction: opium helps the headaches generated by his traumatic brain injury.
This fantastic detective novel has plenty of twists and turns, yet there are no loose plot bunnies Eagerly awaiting the next in the series.
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Crooked in His Ways is available through:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books2Read
Absence of Mercy is available through:
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You can see my review of Absence of Mercy here.
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