Daily Archive

After the success of my binge-read of the Maisie Dobbs books (which I talk about here and here) I decided to do it again, this time with the series of novels about aristocrat, MP and private detective Charles Lenox, set in London in the late 1860s and early 1870s and written by the American author Charles Finch. Like Maisie, Lenox is a very engaging character whose personal life forms a backdrop to and often becomes closely entwined with the cases he investigates.

The main characters alongside Lenox are his best female friend and now wife Lady Jane, his best male friend and useful medical man Thomas McConnell, and his former protege Lord John Dallington. There are now seven books in the series with an eighth coming out later this year, and I read the most recent four in a row in less than a week.

Firstly – A Stranger in Mayfair

What is Lenox’s case?

A fellow MP asks Lenox to look into the murder of his footman who has been beaten to death an alleyway behind the house n which he worked, and it’s clear that all is not what it seems, either in the household itself or the young man’s personal life.

What did I learn about that I didn’t know before?

Quite a bit about the sport of boxing and how a new MP is inducted into the life of Parliament.

What’s happening in Lenox’s personal life?

Newly married, starting his career as an MP, trying to settle down into his new life and leave all that sleuthing nonsense behind.

Did I enjoy it?

Yes I did, a good story to ease myself back into the series after a break of some time, I guessed part of the reason for the murder but not the perpetrator.