Remember that title, People of Abandoned Character. There’s really no one in Clare Whitfield’s debut historical mystery that I would care to know, not even the narrator. However, the more I thought about the book, the more I realized it did just exactly what the author intended. I actually sent in a starred review of the book despite my revulsion for most of the people in it. The mystery has echoes of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca along with accounts of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

In 1885, Susannah Chapman heads to London after her grandmother’s death, with the intention of studying to be a nurse at London Hospital in Whitechapel. Three years later, she weds Dr. Thomas Lancaster, a surgeon, and is fired as a nurse because she’s married. On her honeymoon, she discovers how besotted her new husband is with her, and that he’s a hedonist who revels in pleasure of all sorts, including liquor and laudanum.

When they return to his house in Chelsea, though, she finds a different man. Her husband is an angry, abusive man, and his housekeeper, Mrs. Wiggs, scares her to death. The woman dotes on Thomas, but, Susannah is unprepared to be a doctor’s wife, and lacks the skills to deal with Mrs. Wiggs. After she argues with Thomas, Susannah is ignored by both her husband and housekeeper, unless he wants to have violent sex.

With no company, Susannah turns to the newspapers and the recent accounts of first one murder and then another in Whitechapel. When Thomas comes home in the early hours of the morning, and he and Mrs. Wiggs keep secrets, Susannah begins to suspect that her husband may be the killer of those women in Whitechapel.

However, Susannah, with secrets of her own, from her childhood, and her twenties, has no one to turn to. She rashly picks a doctor, and confides her fears to him. But, Thomas and Mrs. Wiggs have plans of their own for the woman who has become unstable.

This novel, set in 1888, is beautifully written. However, remember that title and my comment about the unreliable narrator. Susannah has a past. Can she be trusted to tell the story of People of Abandoned Character? And, don’t forget, this is a mystery with connections to the Whitechapel murders. It’s not a pretty story in any way. Well-written and original, yes. But, certainly not a pretty story.

*****

Join us tomorrow, for my interview with Clare Whitfield.

People of Abandoned Character by Clare Whitfield. House of Zeus, 2020. ISBN 9781838932732 (hardcover), 432p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a .PDF to review for a journal.