IN MYRTLE PERIL

Another thrilling mystery from our young Victorian sleuth.

All the members of Myrtle’s household are suffering from malaise at the lack of crimes to investigate. Myrtle; her father, the Prosecuting Solicitor; and her brilliant governess, Miss Judson have no villainies to uncover, and it’s so dull. It’s exciting when Father gets pulled into the case of a long-ago shipwreck—is Sally, a White girl about Myrtle’s age, an heiress or a fraud? But the case of Sally-the-possible-heiress will have to wait; Father needs his tonsils removed (a dangerous surgery in 1894, even in a “marvelous specimen of modernity” like the Royal Swinburne Hospital). When Father witnesses a murder in the hospital, is it real or a delusion? Only Myrtle and Miss Judson, ably assisted by Sally and Peony, Myrtle’s talkative cat, can expose the truth. Myriad secrets all come back to the central mystery, and though some tertiary subplots are lightly developed, the mystery as a whole is charming. How can it be otherwise when solved by “a cat, a dog, two doctors, a journalist on crutches, an unemployed law clerk, a solicitor in pyjamas, a nurse with a cricket bat, a governess, an off-duty housekeeper, and one small frantic Investigator”? Myrtle’s family is White; multiple characters of color are present, including biracial French Guianese Miss Judson.

Enthusiastically, chaotically delightful.