Quick entertaining fluff. It is nice to read entertaining fluff on occasion.

Not so impressed. I really liked the first two in this series featuring Sally Lockhart and I still love her character, but comparisons to Dickens aside, a fair amount (or too many for me) of pages were screeds about poverty and equality. Show it. Don’t just tell it. And putting long speeches into the mouths of otherwise less speechifying characters doesn’t do it for me. Not to mention the villain was so evil, as were many of the other “bad guys,” that I just got frustrated. ( )

Another good mystery. I do like these characters. ( )

The first chapter of this sucked me in like a gigantic vortex. Cannot put it down and cannot wait to read the two preceding books. ( )

Sally Lockhart is a rare woman in Victorian England. She’s a single mother, competent, independent, and a successful and prosperous business owner. She has never been married, so when she is served with divorce papers, she cannot understand how such a mistake could be made. It soon becomes clear it is not a mistake. The details about her in the document are correct -- all except one. She has never met the man claiming to be her husband, the man who wants to take custody of her daughter.
I would not have labeled this a YA book. There is nothing juvenile about it. It is a suspenseful Dickensian story of vengeance, greed, cruelty, and corruption, which vividly captures the social conflicts of the time. The images of Victorian London are detailed and clear. The contrasts between rich and poor, worker and owner are sharp. The only YA aspect may be a carryover from the first book in the series, The Ruby in the Smoke, in which Sally is first introduced as a 16-year-old orphan. I didn’t see that book as specifically YA either, though.
My only criticism, and it’s not a strong one, is that I thought Sally should have been a bit quicker on the uptake in identifying the real force behind her troubles. I figured it out long before she did, but then I, as a reader, understand this is a novel and therefore must make sense. Real life, of course, is not like that.
I highly recommend this book to all readers, especially those fond of Victorian mysteries. It’s a great story.
( )