A Killer in the Crystal Palace by Deb Marlowe

For twenty years now, I’ve enjoyed the rather addictive hobby of researching my family history. I love the detective aspect of it, and being someone with an eye for detail, I enjoy persevering to winkle out information. I look forward to poring over historical records at weekends. Fleshing out ancestors’ lives so that they’re more than just names and dates is always exciting as you never know what you’re going to discover.

One discovery I made led me to a great feeling of pride in my 5x great grandfather William Paskey. From a newspaper article, I found out that he and his brother John, who were both metal workers, actually made one of the exhibits that appeared at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. The Exhibition was organised by members of the Royal Society and Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, as a celebration of design and technology. It took place in the specially built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park and was attended by about six million visitors, which was a huge number for the time. All kinds of wonders from across the world were displayed, and amongst them was the one constructed by William and John Paskey, known as Count Dunin’s “Man of Steel”. This was an expanding model of a man, intended to illustrate the different proportions of the human figure, and it comprised more than 7,000 metal pieces.

Since making the fascinating discovery about the “Man of Steel”, I’ve had an interest in The Great Exhibition, so I was thrilled to come across Deb Marlowe’s historical mystery A Killer in the Crystal Palace, which is set at the event.

Blurb

Kara Levett, daughter of a baron, is thrilled to be an exhibitor at the Great Exhibition, demonstrating her elaborate automatons and case clocks to the crowds.

But her situation grows perilous when a man is murdered in the Crystal Palace and she becomes the prime suspect. With the unexpected aid of Niall Kier, a reserved Scottish blacksmith, artist, and fellow exhibitor, Kara begins the work the Metropolitan Police show no inclination for—finding the true killer.

My Review

Cozy mystery is one of my favourite genres to read, and I also love a good historical novel. To find a book that combines these and is also set at The Great Exhibition had me very excited. I became even more excited when I started to read and discovered that Kara’s exhibits were automatons, one of them sounding very similar to Count Dunin’s Man of Steel. I felt a personal draw to the book and dived right in.

Ms Marlowe is obviously a careful and meticulous researcher, and as I read, I felt as if I was walking through the Crystal Palace myself, experiencing the wonder of the exhibition and the “aura” of the era. She has a good feel for the period and enhances her story by dropping in little historical details and titbits here and there.

A key factor that makes any book enjoyable and worth reading is, of course, character development, and this is another area that Deb Marlowe does very well. Both Kara and Niall, the two main characters, are well drawn and interesting. Kara particularly appealed to me as I love seeing a woman who’s not afraid to be herself and makes her way as a woman in a man’s world. Kara is feminine and lives within the constraints of what would have been expected at the time, but she’s also independent and not afraid to stand up for herself, probably because she’s had an unconventional upbringing.

There are also some interesting and unconventional secondary characters in Niall’s assistant, Gyda, Kara’s friend Eleanor, and Kara’s butler, Turner, who, it turns out, is a bit more than an ordinary butler. And I loved the cockney lads who play a small but significant role. I’m not from London myself, but as far as I could see, Ms Marlowe has done a good job of making the boys sound authentic.

The actual murder mystery is very intriguing, and the book has the feel of both a spy novel and a thriller. It is a cozy mystery in the sense that there’s no gore, sex, or potentially offensive language, but I would say that it has more intensity than the average cozy. There’s a lot of subterfuge going on, and Niall and Kara do some excellent detective work to solve the mystery. There’s a bit of a dance to get the two of them working together, particularly, I think, as they’re both quite independent, especially Kara. By the end of the book, though, there is a nice relationship between them and, as might be expected, some level of attraction, leaving us wondering if they’ll get together at a later stage in the series.

When it comes to a book set in the UK but written by an author who isn’t British, I know I tend to be very exacting. Deb Marlowe isn’t a Brit, and I’m pleased to say that she’s done a pretty good job on that score. There are very few Americanisms to be found, which is a big win for me. There are also very few anachronistic words, which is another sign of the author’s attention to detail and feel for the period.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed reading A Killer in the Crystal Palace and am looking forward to reading more books in the Kier and Levett series. I highly recommend you try this book if you love historical mysteries and intriguing characters.

A Killer in the Crystal Palace was published by Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. on 17 February 2023. You can buy your own copy of the book on Amazon UK or Amazon US.

More information about The Great Exhibition can be found on Wikipedia.