The Solitary House by Lynn Shepherd

A mystery book review

Cleverly constructed in the interstices of Dickens' Bleak House, The Solitary House centers on a dismissed policeman turned private detective. Charles Maddox has just one client, a grumpy man employing him to find a long-missing grandchild. When the well-connected lawyer Edward Tulkinghorn offers Maddox a small but well paid job, he leaps at the opportunity. Someone has been sending threatening letters to a banker, and Tulkinghorn asks him to find out who. Maddox has hardly embarked on this task when his employers prove to be the greater and more sinister mystery.

Read on its own, The Solitary House is a fully satisfying historical mystery. Those who have read Bleak House, and especially those who have also read The Woman in White by Dickens' friend Wilkie Collins, will enjoy recognizing familiar haunts and characters seen from new angles. The London air, "so deadened with a greasy yellow fog that you can barely see three paces ahead;" the horrifying inner city cemetery Tom-All-Alone's; and the shooting gallery where poor Jo dies are all made newly relevant. The sinister Tulkinghorn is the chief pleasure among the borrowed characters, concealing secrets Dickens did not expose. Inspector Bucket and Lady Dedlock also appear. The story itself is entirely original and will keep readers engrossed with plenty of suspense, twists and surprises.

An unnamed narrator outside time ushers readers through the setting, pointing out features of the landscape, both physical and cultural. "Muffle your face, if you can, against the stink of human and animal filth, and try not to look too closely at what it is that's caking your boots, and sucking at your tread.... We have a way to go yet and the day is darkening." Occasionally, this narrator serves up a salient and scary point unknown to the characters. In a less vivid and suspenseful novel, the technique might be distancing. Here, it works. (titled Tom-All-Alone's in the U.K.; 2012; 340 pages, including an Acknowledgments discussing the author's inspirations and sources)