"Fatally Inferior" by Lyn Squire

Dunston Burnett, a retired accountant, arrives at the village of Down to spend a few days as the guest of his old friend Archibald Line, retired chief of Detectives for Scotland Yard and now a private investigator. But Line has left an apology; he’s off to London on a case, and he’ll be returning shortly. He’s left a pile of notes and letters for Burnett to read, knowing his friend’s interest in detection. 

The case is potentially enormous. The most famous resident of Down in one Charles Darwin. His daughter-in-law, wife of son Richard, has disappeared and presumably been kidnapped. The ransom is that Darwin must write in the newspaper a renunciation of his theory of evolution. Suspicions have fallen immediately on a doctor who’s been a critic of Darwin’s theory.  

Darwin duly complies and writes the article. But the missing woman’s body is found, and Scotland Yard shifts its suspicions to her husband, Richard Darwin. Line knows Scotland Yard is wrong, gets his hands on some evidence, but is killed outside Euston Station before he can bring it to the police. Without any new evidence, events take on a force of their own, and Richard is arrested, tried, and executed.

 

Dunston Burnett knows his now-dead detective friend had new evidence, but he didn’t know what it was. He undertakes his own investigation, one that eventually leads to a diabolical plot.

 

Lyn Squire

Fatally Inferior is the second Dunston Burnett mystery by Lyn Squire. The first, Immortalised to Death, focused on the murder of Charles Dickens. For the record, Dickens wasn’t murdered, but Quires wrote a rather plausible alternative account of the great writer’s death. Darwin didn’t have a son named Richard or a daughter-in-law who was kidnapped and murdered, but Squire has invented a credible alternative story. He also drops enough hints as to what is really going on that the reader cheerfully works alongside Burnett to solve the case.

 

Squire spent 25 years at the Work Bank, where he published numerous articles and books on international development and poverty. He also served as editor of the Middle East Development Journal and was the founding president of the Global Development Network, which supports promising scholars from the developing world. He was attracted to writing mysteries by developing a solution to Drood, which he incorporated into Immortalised to Death. Born in Cardiff, Wales, he is now an American citizen and lives in Virginia.  

 

Fatally Inferior is a fine Victorian mystery, well researched and fully believable as a story. It’s also the second of a planned Dunston Burnett trilogy, and I’m eagerly looking forward to next installment.

 

Related:

 

Immortalised to Death by Lyn Squire.

 

Some Monday Readings

Dear Journalists: Stop Trying to Save Democracy – Yascha Mounk at Persuasion.

 

Lady Scrooges – Rhys Laverty at First Things Magazine.

 

Romania’s Russiagate Hoax – Rod Dreher at Rod Dreher’s Diary.

 

What is the Earliest Complete List of the Canon of the New Testament? – Michael Kruger at Canon Fodder.

 

David Foster Wallace on Infinite Things – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.