A Stranger in Mayfair: A Mystery [Paperback]

In Charles Finch'sA Stranger in Mayfair, the next enthralling installment in the Charles Lenox Mysteries, detective Lenox tries to resist the lure of a case and focus on his new career in Parliament.

Returning from a continental honeymoon with his new wife, Lady Jane, Lenox is asked by a colleague in Parliament to consult in the murder of a footman, bludgeoned to death with a brick. His investigation uncovers some unsettling facts about the family he served and a strange, second identity that the footman himself cultivated.

Going into the boxing clubs and public houses, the Mayfair mansions and servants' quarters of Victorian London, Lenox gradually realizes that an old friend may be implicated in the footman's death. Soon a suspect is arrested, but Lenox has his doubts. Desperately trying to balance the opening of Parliament and what he feels sure is a dark secret surrounding the murder, he soon discovers that the killer is someone seemingly beyond suspicion, and may be prepared to spill blood againeven a detective's.

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 the New 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

An absolute delight . . . Finch vividly brings 1860s London to life. USA Today

Readers of Anne Perry should be snatching up Finch's books and clamoring for more. Library Journal (starl#.