I'm reading a new series of period mystery novels. Well, they're new to me. And new novels in the series are still being published, so they really are pretty current. Written by Will Thomas, these novels are set in Victorian London and feature private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn.
Growing up, I loved Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales. Not really because the mystery puzzles were tricky and difficult to solve, but because I loved rejoining the characters episode after episode as they met with triumph and disaster and treated those two imposters just the same (apologies to Rudyard Kipling, another author of the era).
Will Thomas' series has much in common with the Holmes/Watson canon. Both are set in London. Both have a somewhat mysterious lead protagonist. Both have an assistant on hand to narrate the story. Both are tell their stories in fairly linear fashion (something that seems increasingly uncommon in modern novels).
The new Barker/Llewelyn books differ from the Holmes/Watson stories in that they have a stronger ethnic twist. Asian and Jewish immigrants in London play major roles in the Barker/Llewelyn books. The author has no racial knife to twist, and, writing in modern times, has no audience antipathy with which to deal. The Barker/Llewelyn books are also a bit grittier, not in a prurient way, but in being a bit more honest about what life was like in Victorian England.
There are five Will Thomas Barker/Llewelyn books currently available in shops (in order of publication): SOME DANGER INVOLVED
TO KINGDOM COME
THE LIMEHOUSE TEXT
THE HELLFIRE CONSPIRACY
THE BLACK HAND
Will Thomas has identified both the Conan Doyle's Holmes/Watson series and Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels as inspirations. And part of their inspiration was the long-lived series. I look forward to many more adventures with Barker and Llewelyn.
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