"Death Among the Nightingales" by David Field

It’s London, 1895. An Irish terrorist sets off a bomb at a dinner of Coldstream Guard officers at the Tower of London. Florence Nightingale arranges for several of her nurses to attend the victims in the hospital. She also arranges for Adelaide Carlyle West, now the mother of an infant daughter, to have a monitoring and administrative role. Adelaide is married to Matthew West, the curate at St. Dunstan’s Church in London’s East End. Her father is James Carlyle, the coroner at the London Hospital. 

Detective John Jennings of Scotland Yard is investigating the bombing. The political pressure to find the terrorists is enormous. Jennings finds himself in the position of having to rely upon Adelaide and Matthew, not to mention James, for information, leads, and possible suspects. And one lead points clearly in the direction of an inside job – someone in the room may have planted the bomb.

 

David Field

And then, one by one, Nightingales, as the nurses are called, are being murdered. They’re all in the night shift. The newspapers begin to trumpet the possible return of Jack the Ripper, more to sell newspapers than because of any evidence. It takes a while for Jennings to understand, but Matthew and Adelaide finally convince him that there’s a connection between the bombing and the murders of the nurses.

 

Death Among the Nightingales by David Field is the fourth of four books in the Carlyle & West Victorian Mystery Series. The first is Interviewing the Dead, the second is Death Comes But Twice, and the third is Confronting the Invisible. Field has also written six historical novels set in Tudor England and eight novels in the Esther and Jack Enright Mystery Series. A native of Nottingham, England, he practiced and taught criminal law for his professional career. He now lives in Australia.

 

It’s an increasingly tense story, irrevocably building toward a dramatic climax. Adelaide and Matthew may get their villain, but the cost may be high.

 

Related:

 

Interviewing the Dead by David Field.

 

Death Comes But Twice by David Field.

 

Confronting the Invisible by David Field.

"Confronting the Invisible" by David Field

Curate Matthew West, his fiancée Adelaide Carlyle, and her father Dr. James Carlyle attend a performance of the circus. What looks like an accident happens – a trapeze artist falls to his death. Upon close examination, however, Dr. Carlyle suspects and then determines that this was no accident. But no one can interest Scotland Yard in investigating; too many other crimes are demanding attention. 

Matthew is working is his new parish posting of St. Dunstan’s. Three children have gone missing; the police know children in the poorer neighborhoods go missing all the time. There are also rumors of disembodied children floating outside their parents’ and others’ windows.

 

Two months later, when Matthew and Adelaide return from their honeymoon, three missing children are now 12 missing children. Their investigations lead them to two discoveries – that the missing children may be linked to the circus murder, and there is now the specter of highly contagious disease to deal with.

 

David Field

Confronting the Invisible by David Field is the third of four books in the Carlyle & West Victorian Mystery Series. The first is Interviewing the Dead, the second is Death Comes But Twice, and the fourth is Death Among the Nightingales. Field also written six historical novels set in Tudor England and eight novels in the Esther and Jack Enright Mystery Series. A native of Nottingham, England, he practiced and taught criminal law for his professional career. He now lives in Australia.

 

The investigation story is farmed by the time period – early Edwardian London – and by the social issues involving women (Adelaide is a champion for women’s rights). Confronting the Invisible is another fine entry to the Carlyle & West mystery series.

 

Related:

 

Interviewing the Dead by David Field.

 

Death Comes But Twice by David Field.

"Death Comes But Twice" by David Field

It's London, 1902. Dr. James Carlyle of the London Hospital in Whitechapel has discovered something very odd. He’s examining the body of a dead man and discovers his fingerprints match those of a criminal – a man hung some time before. How can a man die twice? 

Carlyle calls upon Matthew West, a Wesleyan minister serving in a mission who’s worked with Carlyle on a previous case. West, as it turns out, was the minister who accompanied the criminal to his hanging. But he didn’t see anything unusual; in fact, he didn’t see anything at all, as he always shuts his eyes when he attends an execution.

 

But West goes to Newgate Prison to look at the visitor ledgers, and he discover that a woman had visited the condemned man four times before his hanging. He also notes who else attended the execution. And then he, Carlyle, and Carlyle’s very modern and outspoken daughter Adelaide discover that everyone involved in the execution are dying one by one. And Matthew West may be next. Com;licating Matthew’s life is the appearance of an older women who seems to be doing her best to seduce the minister.

 

David Field

Matthew is in love with Adelaide, but without a parish of his own and a stable income, he has no means to provide for a wife. For her part, Adelaide seems to go out of her way to keep the minister at arm’s length, even as he helps her with an election campaign. That is, until he’s threatened first with seduction and then bodily harm. 

 

Death Comes But Twice by David Field is the second of four books in the Carlyle & West Victorian Mystery Series. The first is Interviewing the Dead, the third is Confronting the Invisible, and the fourth is Death Among the Nightingales. It’s a historical mystery that has a fascinating premise supported by rich historical detail and a growing romance. That detail includes the then nascent science of fingerprints, which were just coming into use by police organizations but had yet to be tested in court.

 

Field also written six historical novels set in Tudor England and eight novels in the Esther and Jack Enright Mystery Series. A native of Nottingham, England, he practiced and taught criminal law for his professional career. He now lives in Australia.

 

It’s a fun, enjoyable series, full of late Victorian and early Edwardian history.

 

Related:

 

Interviewing the Dead by David Field.