Murder by Lamplight

McDonough’s run-of-the-mill debut finds a pioneering female physician in Victorian England enmeshed in a murder mystery. A legal loophole allowing doctors with foreign accreditation to practice medicine in England has benefited Julia Lewis, who’s recently returned to London after completing medical school in the United States. She gets a chance to put her training to use when her grandfather, Dr. Andrew Lewis, is unable to fulfill his summons to a gruesome crime scene at a construction site, and Julia takes his place. There she meets Scotland Yard Insp. Richard Tennant, who shows her the corpse of Reverend Tobias Atwater, “a tireless champion of the downtrodden” who’s been found dead with his genitals mutilated. Atwater proves to be the first in a string of savage slayings linked by a punctured balloon concealed in the victims’ clothing, one of which contains a note that casts doubt on Tennant’s arrest and execution of the infamous Railway Killer several years earlier. Terrified that the Railway Killer is still at large and impressed by Julia’s observations in the Atwater case, Tennant recruits her to help him solve the recent murders. McDonough delivers a competent whodunit, but little about the characters or the setting is memorable. Readers intrigued by the premise of a historical mystery centered on a woman physician should check out E.S. Thomson’s Jem Flockhart series for a fresher take. Agent: Jim Donovan, Jim Donovan Literary. (Mar.)