Dark Dawn over Steep House

Kasasian’s fifth Victorian-era novel featuring “personal detective” Sidney Grice and Grice’s ward, March Middleton, shows him back at the top of his game after 2016’s disappointing The Secrets of Gaslight Lane. Geraldine Hockaday, the daughter of a high-ranking War Office official, was raped by a wealthy German nobleman, whom the police apprehended as he was dragging Geraldine down an alley in London’s East End. She reported her assault to the police and was prepared to testify in court against the attacker, but her father threatened to institutionalize her if she did not drop charges. This outrage prompts Geraldine’s brother to ask Grice to get justice for his sister. After a typically cryptic prologue, March, an astute investigator, notes that one of the many tangled threads essential to understanding Geraldine’s rape and her father’s actions relates to the murder of a respected retired surgeon, Anthony Lamb, three years earlier. Lamb had his skull bashed in with a funerary vase while visiting his family’s plot in a London cemetery. The twisted solution to the case ranks as one of the series’ most terrifying, and classic whodunit fans will appreciate Kasasian’s playing fair with them. (Dec.)