BOOK REVIEW: Ghost in the Garden by Mary Lancaster

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Ghost in the Garden, book three in Mary Lancaster’s Victorian Mystery series, Silver and Grey, is now available! I am hooked on this series.

Constance Silver, a notorious brothel owner and Solomon Grey, a wealthy, upright businessman from Jamaica have both learned enough about aristocrats to circulate along the fringes of the ton, but they both have complicated pasts that would prevent them from ever belonging in that crowd. Thrown together in the past while pursuing their own interests, Constance and Solomon have teamed up to solve murders before. Discovering themselves skilled at this, and adept as partners, they decide to open an inquiry agency as a sideline to their regular work.

It isn’t only an interest in solving mysteries that inspired the agency. They also wanted a way to keep and grow the connection between them. Although a romance is impossible—Constance doesn’t want to leave the brothel, 1) because she has created it as a lifeline for women who have no other place to go, and 2) neither Constance nor Solomon want that kind of relationship. Constance doesn’t sell her own body. And she doesn’t force the down-and-out women who come to her to enter the prostitution business unless they want to. The others, she works to place in respectable jobs.

But, impossible though it may be, there’s a spark between the two that grows hotter with each book.

The first official case the agency takes on is to investigate a ghost-like figure that has been seen in the foggy garden of a wealthy slum lord. The person hiring them is the man’s formidable wife. In order to get into the house, to investigate the ghost, Constance takes a pretend position as the wife’s lady’s maid. The pervasive sense of danger is justified when they find a dead body in the wine cellar. Now, it’s another murder investigation, not just a ghost hunt.

Constance and Solomon hunt for clues while the reader follows along. The identity of the murderer may not come as a surprise to the reader, but the maze of clues and urgency of solving the case makes a compelling story. And the deepening of the relationship between the two protagonists adds to the suspense.

I can’t wait for book four!