Keeping Bad Company: A Liberty Lane Mystery

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. (June)