A Whisper of Death by Darcy Burke

 

Setting: Victorian London, 1868

Main characters:

HADRIAN BECKET. The intelligent and curious Earl of Ravenhurst is determined to find the man who stabbed him and left him for dead. The attack left him with something else--psychic visions of past events when he touches certain objects; visions that he thinks might be others' memories. And some of those memories are from the man who tried to murder him.

TILDA WREN. 25 and a self-proclaimed spinster. She lives with her grandmother and works as a private investigator with the skills she learned from her father who worked for Scotland Yard. Hadrian hires her to help him find his attacker; she's even more invested in their investigation when they discover the same man might have also murdered her grandmother's cousin.

My thoughts: Despite their different backgrounds, these two characters work really well together. (Something that probably would not have happened in real life.) Hadrian is deferential to and respectful of Tilda and her investigative ablilies while he struggles to understand and make use of his own new psychic gifts...or curse, as he calls them. And Tilda is down-to-earth, clever, and unshirking. I liked them both. I also really like that Victorian time period! Burke includes fun historical details, and her novel is well-paced and suspenseful. It's an entertaining mystery and I look forward to reading the next book.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Happy Reading!

The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean

 

"I have a hard time not blaming myself for what happened. I wish I didn't. I wish this was not a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who wander off in the dark. Who are made to learn there are bad people everywhere. That the truth is these people are not strangers. They are the men who you sleep with, the men you work with, the men you raise. I wish this wasn't what it means to be female--it is not a matter of if something bad will happen, but when."

Two years. Two weeks. One day. 

That's how long Ellie Black has been missing when she stumbles from the Captiol State Forest near Olympia, Washington. She's thin, bruised, clearly traumatized, and wearing a sweatshirt spattered with someone else's blood. Ellie's disappearance was Chelsey Calhoun's first case as a detective. Now she's hoping to find Ellie's abductor and arrest him. Only Ellie won't answer any of her questions, and it's clear she's keeping secrets. When Chelsey learns that the blood on Ellie's sweatshirt is from another girl who went missing before Ellie, Chelsey fears there are more missing girls out there still being held by the man or men who took Ellie. And she's determined to find them. 

"Ever since Ellie Black's disappearance, Chelsey has volunteered for any case involving violence against women. She always has plenty of work to do. All those beaten, all those bruised, all those maimed women are welcomed on Chelsey's shores. It is a type of atonement, Chelsey understands. She could not save (her sister) Lydia. She could not solve Ellie's case. ... A lump rises in Chelsey's throat, and she gulps it back. She won't allow the tears to come. All these girls. These bright, bold, beautiful girls. All that potential wasted. All those possibilities snuffed out. What could have been. The question stretches to infinity. She pulls one of Lydia's Beatrix Potter rabbits from the bed and screams into it with a shimmery, impotent rage."

This mystery is both page-turning and haunting. It alternates between Ellie's and Chelsey's POVs. I could understand and sympathize with Chelsey's intense determination to learn the truth about what happened to Ellie, and to keep it from happening to any other girls. And I liked the way Ellie's story unfolded bit by bit over the course of the novel. It kept me guessing about what secrets she was hiding. And there's a good, very unexpected twist, at the end. This is a very compelling thriller, as well as a sad commentary on the bad things that can happen to young girls in our society.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Happy Reading!