Season of Darkness

Set in Victorian London, this series launch from Harrison (the Burren series) lacks her usual inventiveness. Insp. Charles Field, the inspiration for Bleak House’s Inspector Bucket, invites authors Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to the morgue to view the body of a young woman who was strangled and thrown into the Thames. To Dickens’s horror, he recognizes the victim as Isabella Gordon, who once lived in Urania Cottage, the home Dickens set up for ex-con women to be trained in preparation for a new life in Australia. Gordon was booted out of the program two years earlier for being a troublemaker, and Collins and Dickens resolve to solve her murder. They get some information from Isabella’s friend Sesina, who left the halfway house right after Isabella. Sesina, who was working as a servant with Isabella, says that her friend left two nights earlier to meet someone, but doesn’t reveal that Isabella set up the assignation with blackmail on her mind. The plot doesn’t generate much steam, and other authors have done a better job of depicting Dickens and Collins as sleuths. [em]Agent: Peter Buckman, Ampersand Agency (U.K.). (July) [/em]