A slash of emerald

In 1867, Annie O'Neill, a London shopgirl, is on her way home from modeling for a woman artist--a gig she takes on to supplement her meager wages--when she is accosted by soldiers and then detained by the police as a probable prostitute. As required by the law, Inspector Richard Tennant calls in Dr. Julia Lewis for the exam. On her way home, Julia is on the scene of a skating disaster in Regents Park, treating, among others, Charles Allingham, a respected art publisher. When she calls at the Allingham mansion the next day, she meets Mary Allingham, an artist preparing for the upcoming women's salon. Mary is distraught that her studio had been broken into, with a portrait slashed and painted over with a large green W. It's not until Tennant calls on Julia to examine the body a woman who, like Annie, was a model, that the threads converge: this model is the subject of Mary's painting. As Julia and Richard join forces to solve the murders, they uncover sordid links between the rarefied art world and the difficult life that poor women, especially single women and widows, face in the city. As with the first in the series (Murder by Lamplight, 2024), this book will appeal to Anne Perry fans, with both the exploration of societal ills and with the developing relationship between Julia and Richard.

In McDonough's desultory sequel to Murder by Lamplight, Dr. Julia Lewis, who runs a clinic in the seedy London neighborhood of Whitechapel, is drawn into a sprawling murder investigation in 1867. An accident at a skating pond brings Julia into contact with the Allington family: artist Mary; her brother, Charles; and his wife, Louisa. When model and dressmaker's assistant Franny Riley is found raped and murdered, Scotland Yard calls on Julia to perform the autopsy, after which she discovers that Charles knew Franny. Then Charles appears to die by suicide after ingesting arsenic-spiked paint, but Mary suspects murder. As Julia tries to get to the bottom of these events, the body count rises. The plot incorporates a potpourri of Victorian vice, including gambling, art forgery, blackmail, prostitution, and drug addiction, to overstimulating effect. Meanwhile, predictable misunderstandings fail to add stakes to a tepid romance subplot between Julia and a Scotland Yarder. Historical fans will enjoy McDonough's well-placed tidbits about early subterranean railways and the Royal Academy, but some of the discussions of the era's gender roles land with a thud. This falls short of its promising predecessor. Agent: Jim Donovan, Jim Donovan Literary. (Mar.)