Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

Sutton’s superior plotting, characterization, and pacing make the pages fly by in this epic series kickoff that spans three years. In 1859, Campbell Lawless, who previously worked as an apprentice to his watchmaker father, joins the London police and soon finds his expertise at watch repair, rather than his newly acquired deductive skills, in demand. That could change after a water-powered crane, known as a hydraulic devil, explodes at the under-construction Euston railway station, and Lawless is asked to examine the future terminal’s gigantic clock. He finds most of the timepiece’s workings missing and a corpse. The mystery deepens for the novice copper when the coroner tells him that the supposed victim of the explosion has been dead for days. Meanwhile, Lawless’s superior seems eager to curtail the investigation. Along the way to the ultimate reveal, Sutton brings Victorian England vividly to life, from the poor forced to eke out a living in the sewers to the era’s corrupt power brokers. (May)

This review has been updated to fix a typo.