Keeping Bad Company

April 16, 2012
The return of Liberty Lane’s younger brother, Tom, to England from India, where he worked for the powerful East India Company, sets the stage for Peacock’s solid fifth Victorian historical featuring the female private inquiry agent (after 2011’s When the Devil Drives). Tom has been summoned to appear before a parliamentary committee looking into the company, especially its role in the opium trade. The inquiry inevitably focuses on the murder in India more than six months earlier of a man named Burton, the assistant of Alexander McPherson, a merchant who branched off from the East India Company to establish his own successful business. Against many obstacles, Lane must try to solve Burton’s murder. She gets a fresher trail to follow after a related killing in London. A well-executed plot compensates for a solution that’s somewhat less clever than others in the series.

May 15, 2012
The sudden return of Liberty Lane's brother Tom from India embroils them both in a delicate and dangerous case. Tom, an employee of the East India Company, is horrified to discover that his sister earns a living as a private investigator, but he needs her skills when a friend is killed. Tom is home to give evidence at an official enquiry into the murder of wealthy merchant Alexander McPherson's assistant, who was reportedly carrying a fortune in jewels. Tom's mentor, Mr. Griffiths, despises McPherson, who has made a fortune exporting opium to China in exchange for tea, and has written a pamphlet exposing the evil trade. When Griffiths is found dead, a supposed suicide, Tom is devastated, and Liberty immediately suspects that all is not what it seems. Although Griffiths' pamphlet has been stolen from the publishers, the original manuscript still exists, and Liberty learns a great deal from reading it. She becomes convinced that Griffiths' death is linked to an experience he had in India, where he was posted to a small but wealthy princedom along with a merchant and a soldier. The merchant was McPherson, but the soldier's identity is something Liberty must discover if she is to solve a case that becomes more complicated with each passing day. Liberty's fifth case (When the Devil Drives, 2011, etc.) nicely balances the exotic history of the East India Company, whose private army rules India for British gain, with a mystery that offers a wide range of possible evildoers.

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