Book Review: Murder in Morningside Heights by Victoria Thompson (Gaslight Mysteries #19)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Characters, humor, compelling plot

Cons: I was ahead of the characters a few times, but still confused about the mystery

The Bottom Line:

Women’s college death

Character’s lives still changing

Absorbing again

Murder at a Women’s College

While I always enjoy seeing characters’ lives growing in the series I read, Frank and Sarah Malloy have really been going through changes in the last few books of the Gaslight Mysteries.  I’m finding I’m enjoying watching things evolve as I read these books.  Murder in Morningside Heights was a great next step for them and me.

If you are new to the series, it is set in New York City in the 1890’s.  When we first met them, Frank was a Detective Sergeant with the police, and Sarah was a widow making her living as a midwife.  It’s been a long journey to get them to this point, this is book nineteen after all, but they are now newlyweds, and Frank, no longer with the police, has just opened a new business as a private detective.

It hasn’t been that long since Frank opened his new agency, and he is finding that, so far, the cases haven’t been too exciting.  That changes when the Northrups come into his office.  Their daughter, Abigail, has been teaching at the Normal School, a women’s college she graduated from the previous spring.  However, she was murdered on the school grounds.  The police are writing it off as a theft gone wrong, and they aren’t going to investigate more without a bribe.  Since her parents want her murder solved, but without a huge scandal, they hire Frank to investigate.

It isn’t long before Sarah is once again helping him.  As they investigate, they find several competing motives for murder.  Which one of them actually led to Abigail’s death?

As always with the series, I was drawn into the story and setting, and I had a hard time returning to the real world when I had to put the book down.  I was usually a little bit ahead of the characters, mainly because I knew I was reading a book so I could jump to the next logical conclusion, but I still wasn’t completely sure which of the things Frank and Sarah were uncovering would be the ultimate solution to the mystery.  When we did get there, the climax was perfectly logical.

Of course, the other reason I got caught up in the story is the characters.  Quite obviously, I love them.  I wouldn’t be reading book nineteen in the series if I didn’t, right?  Over the series, Frank and Sarah’s world has grown to include quite a few supporting characters.  While we don’t see all of them here, the ones who do pop in are a pure delight.  The suspects are just as compelling and do a great job of keeping us guessing on what is really going on.

I find myself laughing more with each book in the series.  Most of the humor comes from the characters and their relationships to each other.  The way they tease each other is great; it’s easy to see how much they care about each other.

The humor does help soften some of the more serious subjects the come up in the series.  Because of the 1890’s setting, some of these topics are danced around a bit more than they might be in a modern mystery.  The series continues to sit in the traditional side of the mystery spectrum, at least for me because of the more serious subjects tackled in the pages.

Murder in Morningside Heights will please fans of the Gaslight Mysteries.  I’m so glad I am spending the time catching up on these delightful books.  If you’ve missed them, you’ll be glad you made the effort to catch up as well.

Here are the rest of the Gaslight Mysteries in order.