The House on Vesper Sands

“Young, poor women are disappearing in London in 1893, but their position keeps the story from being of too much interest to the public until intrepid reporter Olivia Hillingdon begins her own dangerous investigation in Paraic O’Connell’s latest novel The House on Vesper Sands.

The novel begins with a horrific death that sets the rest of the action course, but the vivid writing of those early scenes is not sustained throughout the book. Perhaps the triple storyline is to blame for this: the disappearing girls and Olivia’s investigation runs parallel to the story of a Gideon Bliss—a young man desperately in love with one of the disappeared—and a formal investigation by one Inspector Cutter, a man whose dialogue often seems obscure for obscurity’s sake. Alongside all of it is an intriguing, though at times clunky, examination of class and gender in England in the late nineteenth century.

There is an excellent who-done-it buried in this book, and if you have a penchant for multilayered mysteries, The House on Vesper Sands may be the book for you.”