51d4ydQWklLSynopsis: “Two cities, two skeletons, linked by a mysterious vision… London, 1850 An Italian music master and an English governess disappear from the house of Sir Neptune Fane, a prominent Member of Parliament. A female skeleton is found in a disused water tank behind a house which has been empty for five years. Her neck had been broken and found with a jewelled chain around it. Charles Dickens is reminded of his time in Venice a few years earlier, when he thought he saw a monk with his hands on a girl’s neck, the glimpse of jewels in fleeting torchlight, a cry of fear. And later he read that a girl was found drowned at the spot where he had his vision. Are the two corpses connected? And what is the link to Sir Neptune Fane? Charles Dickens and Superintendent Sam Jones must find the link between the backstreets of London and the mysterious canals of Venice… At Midnight In Venice is the fifth urban mystery in J. C. Briggs’ literary historical series, the Charles Dickens investigations, a traditional British detective series set in Victorian London.“

My Review

This is the fifth book in this historical crime fiction series featuring Charles Dickens and his policeman friend Superintendent Jones.  I do enjoyed this series as it feels like meeting up with old friends.

This story was quite involved as there seemed to be two distinct cases, one in Venice and other in London, but were they be somehow connected? I enjoyed following Charles Dickens and his good friend Superintendent Sam Jones, as they went about discovering what happened to the woman whose body was found in the water tank. As they come across more bodies Charles keeps thinking back to that incident in Italy and was more convinced that the cases were definitely linked.

Just like in the first book the descriptions of Victorian London were so vivid, that at times I felt like I was reading a Dickens novel, especially with some of the characters names! It did make me very glad to be living now rather than in Victorian times when life was so bleak for everyone.

I didn’t have a clue who the murderer was so just enjoyed where the story took me instead.

I highly recommend this series to lovers of historical crime fiction, particularly if you enjoy books set in Victorian times.

Book 12 of 20 Books of Summer