The Twisted Heart

The gifts Gowers displayed in her true crime book, The Swamp of Death, aren't evident in this middling novel, which reads more like a lesser version of A.S. Byatt's Possession than Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, the book's inspiration, according to the author's postscript. Kit Farr, a present-day Oxford graduate student, stumbles on reports of a real-life murder case—the unsolved butchery of Eliza Grimwood, a London prostitute, in 1838, a half-century before the Ripper crimes. Kit, who believes the killing may have been inspired by Bill Sikes's murder of Nancy in Dickens's Oliver Twist, enlists a new love-interest, mathematics lecturer Joe Leppard, in her researches. but the Grimwood case takes a backseat to Kit and Joe's budding relationship. That Kit makes a major mistake in her thesis doesn't reinforce her credentials as a sleuth. Romance readers will be more satisfied than mystery fans. (Nov.)