At the start of The Laws of Murder, Charles Lenox is optimistic: it’s the start of the year (1876) and he’s in the midst of helping Scotland Yard catch a murderer. The new detective agency he’s set up with his friend and protégé, Dallington, along with two other detectives, is about to open, and he’s sure there will be good press for the firm of Lenox, Dallington, Strickland, and LeMaire. But the new business doesn’t start smoothly: on its opening day there’s a headline in the paper saying Scotland Yard is urging it to close, and the piece singles out Lenox specifically, saying he’s likely to be “more of a burden than an aid to his new colleagues” (13). In the agency’s first seven weeks of business, Lenox doesn’t bring in a single case. And then, in early April, he’s asked by the Yard to consult on a case, but one that hits close to home: Inspector Thomas Jenkins, the person on the police force he’d been closest to, has been shot and killed. Before his death, Jenkins specifically instructed his colleague, Inspector Nicholson, that Lenox should be consulted if Jenkins “should be killed or missing” (30). This, plus the location of the murder, makes Jenkins suspect the Marquess of Wakefield: Jenkins’s body was found practically right outside Wakefield’s house, and Wakefield is the seventh on a list of seven suspects from old cases who Lenox has been trying to get arrested, as part of his return to detective work after his time in Parliament. But it soon becomes clear to Lenox that he needs to be looking at more suspects than just Wakefield, and it later becomes apparent that Jenkins’s murder is not the only crime that needs to be solved.
I really like this whole series, mostly for the characters and setting, and for Charles Finch’s graceful writing style. I love the descriptions of London and its weather, of wet days and tea and toast, of summer evenings with late sunlight and chilled wine in a back garden. In this book, I also liked the moments of humor injected by the bad English of LeMaire’s nephew Pontilleux, who seems like he has the potential to be a solid detective in his own right.
Leave a Reply