From the Shelves of the Paco Library

Not long ago I mentioned Philip Gooden’s series of mysteries set in Shakespeare’s day. Well, he has another series going now, featuring a late 19th century lawyer named Tom Ansell.

In The Salisbury Manuscript, Tom Ansell, the junior member of a London law firm, is sent to Salisbury to collect an odd diary in the possession of Canon Slater. The diary belonged to the Canon’s disreputable father, who had been a crony of Shelley and Lord Byron, and while the Canon - a man of undoubted rectitude – is embarrassed by the many racy entries in the book, his pride of family is so great that he cannot bear to throw the thing away, so he is planning on turning it over to his lawyers for safekeeping, with the idea that, upon his death, it will go to his nephew (also a clergyman) to do with as he wishes. Tom arrives in Salisbury in the midst of some very strange goings-on: a sexton at the Cathedral, who has become obsessed with amateur archaeology, has gone missing, and a burglar has been breaking into houses and stealing things of little or no intrinsic value. Tom meets with the Canon to discuss the manuscript and then returns to his hotel to draw up a memorandum indicating the Canon’s wishes with respect to the safekeeping of the document. When Tom goes back to go over the memorandum with Slater, he finds him dead in his study, stabbed in the back of the head with an obsidian blade. In a classic example of poor timing (for Tom), the police show up and find Tom at the murder scene, whereupon they briefly take him into custody. Tom is released the next day, and his fiancée, Helen Scott, having heard of his difficulties, joins him in Salisbury where they commence their own investigation, interviewing a host of odd suspects, including the Canon’s debauched brother, his cockney servant, the late Canon’s surprisingly exotic wife, and assorted relatives and hangers-on. The book features an exciting chase into the gloomy heights of the Salisbury cathedral, and a couple of intriguing plot twists that reveal the dark truths about several of the key characters – who, as one would expect, are not at all what they first seem to be.

Gooden has created two interesting protagonists in lawyer-turned-reluctant investigator, Tom Ansell, and his future wife, Helen (an aspiring writer of “sensation” novels). The chemistry between the two is charming and they make a great addition to the line of husband-and-wife (or soon-to-be-wife) teams found in the mystery genre.