Murder on Union Square by Victoria Thompson
A mystery book review
In Murder on Union Square, #21 in the Gaslight Mystery series, set in Gilded Age New York City, private detective Frank Malloy and his wife Sarah must solve a personally urgent case. They wish to adopt Catherine, the child Sarah rescued in an earlier Gaslight mystery. Although neither of Catherine's birth parents are alive, her mother's husband is her legal father and could block the adoption by refusing to sign away his rights. When this legal father, an actor playing the love interest of a talented but aging actress, is killed, Frank discovers the body and is accused of murder.
After so many previous Gaslight mysteries, these characters have a history to draw on. Frank is a former police sergeant, now a private detective. Sarah is a wealthy former midwife who has endowed a birthing center. Frank's employee Gino and Sarah's household servant Maeve pitch in to help investigate, and a former client who supports herself by holding seances also gets involved. The theater company, which simmers with scandals, rivalries and superstitions, spawns multitudes of clues that prove baffling to the detectives until everything wraps up in the final chapter.
Briskly paced through most of its length, the story loses some steam as the clues pile up, requiring several scenes consisting mostly of discussion among the detectives. Alert readers may connect some of the dots before the detectives, who seem less worried about the murder charge hanging over Frank's head than they are thrilled by the fun of investigating his case. But the theater denizens are delightfully eccentric, and Murder on Union Square makes fluffy fun for readers who enjoy a touch of comedy, a frisson of sex scandal (nothing explicit), and an amateur lady detective rather sharper than her professional husband. (2018, 323 pages and an Author's Note on the history behind the novel)