The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery [Paperback]

With all the humanity, glamor, and mystery that readers have come to love, the next Charles Lenox Mystery,The Laws of Murder, is a shining confirmation of the enduring popularity of Charles Finch's Victorian series.

It's 1876, and Charles Lenox, once London's leading private investigator, has just given up his seat in Parliament after six years, primed to return to his first love, detection. With high hopes he and three colleagues start a new detective agency, the first of its kind. But as the months pass, and he is the only detective who cannot find work, Lenox begins to question whether he can still play the game as he once did.

Then comes a chance to redeem himself, though at a terrible price: a friend, a member of Scotland Yard, is shot near Regent's Park. As Lenox begins to parse the peculiar details of the death  an unlaced boot, a days-old wound, an untraceable luggage ticket  he realizes that the incident may lead him into grave personal danger, beyond which lies a terrible truth.

Charles Finchis theUSA Todaybestselling author of the Charles Lenox mysteries, includingThe Vanishing Man. His first contemporary novel,The Last Enchantments,is also available from St. Martin's Press. Finch received the 2017 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. His essays and criticism have appeared in theNew York Times, Slate, Washington Post, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.

There are echoes of Holmes and Watson here, but Lenox is his own man: a humanist, even a kind of feminist, with a deep curiosity and compassion for others that belies his class. The New Yorkeron the Charles Lenox Mysteries

A thick, leisurely, British detective novel, studded with memorable characters. Boston Globe

Finch is as skillful at evoking Victorian London as he is at spinning a crackerjack plot, this one with tentacles into the ls%