The Framingham Fiend: A Colin Pendragon Mystery

In Harris’s disappointing sixth Victorian whodunit featuring Colin Pendragon and Ethan Pruitt, Pendragon is still frail after being shot twice in the chest in 2017’s The Endicott Evil. When his health worsens, Pruitt must take the lead in investigating brutal murders in Whitechapel that appear to be the work of Jack the Ripper. Though the partners know that the real Ripper is confined to an asylum, they have kept that fact secret because they lacked enough evidence to charge him criminally. Meanwhile, the public and the press fear that the serial killer has resumed his butcheries, and Queen Victoria worries that a grandnephew, Gerhard, who stabbed a fellow student at the Royal College of Surgeons, may be responsible. Many other authors have used the possibility of royal involvement in the mutilation murders of prostitutes in the East End in their Ripper fiction, and despite references to Pruitt’s history with opium addiction, he comes across as fairly colorless. Readers will hope Harris gives his Holmes-and-Watson-like duo a more original case next time. Agent: Kathy Green, Kathy Green Agency. (June)