WONDERS & WICKEDNESS by Carol Hedges @caroljhedges

5 GOLD stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
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How I discovered this book: I've read all the others in the series and was waiting for this to come out.  Author originally discovered via chatting on Twitter.

Loved it, loved it, loved it.  The fifth book in Carol Hedges' Victorian murder mystery series, featuring crime fighters Stride and Cully, I read and savoured every word.

The plot centres around a man found murdered in the display window of a new department store, and the possible existence of eighteen year old Sybella Wynward, daughter of Lord Hugh and Lady Meriel, who is supposedly dead, following a train accident, but appears to have come to life ~ or has she?

The plot is cleverly and intricately worked out but, as always for me with these books, it comes second to the characterisation, and the star of the whole book, which is London itself.  The parts of the book I enjoyed the most (and I enjoyed every line) were the pictures Ms Hedges paints of our not-so-glorious capital in the 1860s.  As usual with these books, some parts I read twice, because I enjoyed them so much; they made me want to be there and walk those streets myself, even the dark, murky alleys.

Wonders and Wickedness is a riot of technicolour characters, from the bad (Lord Hugh and Montague Foxx), to the daft and deluded (Thorogood and Strictly), to the good (the Cullys), the tragic (Lady Meriel) and the entertaining (Constantia Mortram).  One of my favourites was Felix Lightowler, bookseller and would-be Elizabethan alchemist, who studied the works of John Dee and those of his ilk; I loved the way Ms Hedges wrote his thoughts in the Elizabethan spelling.  The books is filled with similar delightful touches.

Loved it.  Buy it. 🔍