THE WHITECHAPEL CONSPIRACY

Yet another chapter in the life of Superintendent Thomas Pitt of Victorian London’s Bow Street Station (Half Moon Street, p. 87, etc.). The curtain rises on an unlikely beginning: the trial of John Adinett for the murder of his longtime friend Martin Fetters. Though the death first seemed an accident, Pitt’s painstaking investigation has proved it to be murder at the hands of Adinett, a killer apparently without motive. Instead of earning Pitt praise, however, Adinett’s swift conviction and death sentence bring his nemesis a demotion to the rundown precinct of Spitalfields, where he is to live and work away from his connections and his loving wife Charlotte. Sunk in dejection, Pitt perks up when he hears rumors of a so-called Inner Circle of powerful men who wanted Fetters dead for unspecified nefarious reasons of their own. Reporter Lyndon Remus is attempting to link the killing to Jack the Ripper’s labors in Whitechapel a few years back. Meanwhile, Charlotte has become a friend to Fetters’s widow Juno. Searching together in the victim’s library, they discover Adinett’s motive for the murder—and a far-fetched one it is.

There’ll be more killings before the tumultuous saga comes to an end—not a moment too soon for this overlong, unconvincing bag of bones.