The Innocents

Starred review from January 8, 2024
In Walsh’s triumphant sequel to The Tumbling Girl, writer and amateur detective Minnie Ward is reluctantly pulled into the investigation of a potential murder spree in late-19th-century London. Minnie has tried to distance herself from crime solving and from private investigator Albert Easterbrook—her former love interest—in the months since the pair closed their first case. Instead, she’s devoted herself to saving London’s financially troubled Variety Palace music hall, where she works as a script- and songwriter. She’s drawn into another murder case, however, when the widow of Judge David Eddings asks Minnie to probe her spouse’s odd death. The judge allegedly asphyxiated inside a trunk in his home during a game of hide-and-seek with his grandson, but given his claustrophobia, Mrs. Eddings doesn’t believe her husband would have hidden inside such a confined space. Minnie turns to Albert, who soon links Eddings’s death with his own investigation into the suspicious suicide of a financier. As the two poke around for further connections between their cases, they come to fear that whoever killed Eddings and the financier may have also been involved with a deadly incident at a children’s variety show that claimed the lives of nearly 200 young theatergoers more than a decade ago. Walsh once again seamlessly combines vivid period detail, clever plotting, and thoughtful characterizations. This series merits a long run.

Starred review from February 1, 2024

In Walsh's second Victorian England--set "Variety Palace" mystery, Albert Easterbrook asks Minnie Ward to be his partner as a consulting detective, but she demurs, as she's busy managing the Variety Palace music hall and its debt and trying to keep the owner from spending money on zany ideas. And deep down, after the murder of her best friend, Minnie is frightened. But multiple cases finally draw her back into the investigation business: after a man's death by asphyxiation in a locked trunk, his widow suspects murder and asks Minnie for help proving her right. Then the brother of an actor at the Variety vanishes, and a monkey is kidnapped from the music hall. There will be a few more deaths before Albert and Minnie discover that these murders are all connected to a tragedy at another music hall 14 years earlier, when 183 children perished at a Christmas pantomime. It seems that someone is out for revenge. VERDICT The sequel to The Tumbling Girl is another entertaining, well-researched historical mystery, good for fans of Masterpiece Mystery's Miss Scarlet and the Duke. As before, the working people behind the scenes at the music hall are the stars.--Lesa Holstine

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