Murder on Waverly Place (Gaslight Series #11) by Victoria Thompson

From the Publisher

Victoria Thompson once again "vividly recreates the gaslit world of New York."(Publishers Weekly)

Sarah Brandt is not completely surprised when her very proper mother asks her to attend a séance. She knows that Mrs. Decker still carries great guilt over the death of her older daughter, Maggie. So Sarah accompanies her and the spiritualist does seem to contact Maggie-convincing Mrs. Decker to attend another séance.

Only this time, one of the attendees doesn't succeed in speaking to the dead-she joins them. Now, it's up to Sarah and Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy to protect Mrs. Decker from scandal-by determining how a woman was murdered in the pitch dark when every suspect was holding the hand of the person next to them.

Publishers Weekly

Thompson's 11th gaslight mystery to feature midwife Sarah Brandt (after 2008's Murder on Bank Street) fails to bring to life late 19th-century New York City as well as, say, Caleb Carr does in his period fiction, but series fans should be satisfied. Sarah's mother, Elizabeth Decker, who's feeling guilt-ridden over the death of her pregnant oldest daughter, decides to seek supernatural help from a local medium, Madame Serafina. At a séance, someone uses the cloak of darkness to stab to death Mrs. Gittings, a woman also hoping to contact a deceased family member. Since the séance participants were all holding each others' hands throughout the ritual, suspicion focuses on the medium's accomplice. Sarah helps her policeman friend, Det. Sgt. Frank Malloy, investigate. Solid prose in part compensates for a mundane solution to the crime. (June)

Kirkus Reviews

The rebellious daughter of a wealthy family joins an Irish cop to investigate murder at a seance. Widowed Sarah Brandt (Murder on Bank Street, 2008, etc.) has spurned life as a socialite in favor of serving as a midwife to the poor. When her mother, Mrs. Decker, asks Sarah to accompany her to a seance, the skeptical young woman goes along to protect her mother's interests. Years earlier, Sarah's sister Maggie had run off with an unsuitable young man; later she and her child died in childbirth. Now Mrs. Decker, led by a friend who's already attending the sessions where beautiful young medium Madame Serafina holds audiences in thrall, hopes to speak with Maggie and ask forgiveness. Sarah thinks her mother's unsatisfactory initial experience is quite enough. So when there's a murder at another seance, and Sarah's friend Det. Sgt. Malloy calls Sarah to the scene, she's amazed to find her mother among the participants. The two sleuths quickly learn that the murdered woman was running duplicitous seances with help from a shady professor who joined her in fleecing wealthy participants. Because police have little authority over the rich in 1890s New York, Malloy and Sarah must proceed with caution. Serafina's lover, a young Italian boy, seems to be the guilty party, but no crime committed in the pitch-dark is easy to solve. Though sometimes melodramatic, Thompson's Gaslight Mystery series provides a fascinating window into a bygone era.

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