Watchers of the Dead

At the start of Beaufort’s intriguing second Victorian mystery (after 2018’s Mind of a Killer), Pall Mall Gazette reporters Alec Lonsdale and Hulda Friederichs are covering the opening of London’s new Natural History Museum in December 1882 when they discover Professor Dickerson, the museum’s leading zoologist, chopped to death in the basement. The obvious suspects are three members of a cannibalistic African tribe, who have been transported to London to serve as living museum exhibits and disappeared at the same time Dickerson was last seen alive. Lonsdale and Friederichs discover that the professor is the latest in a series of murders targeting prominent men who belong to a mysterious group called the Watchers. When the pair search Dickerson’s home, they find a letter referencing an “unspeakable Happening” the Watchers have planned for Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, Lonsdale is disquieted by tension with his well-born fiancée. Despite some convoluted plotting, Beaufort (the pseudonym of Susanna Gregory and Beau Riffenburgh) offers a vivid, nuanced vision of late-Victorian Britain. Readers fascinated by the era will find much to savor. [em]Agent: Euan Thorneycroft, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (July) [/em]