Hauntings unbridled!

Portrait of Peril (Victorian Mystery #5) by Laura Joh Rowland      

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Strangely, I has a secondary comment running though my consciousness when reading this. I was remembering my pleasure when I purchased the Phantom Comic, "Married at Last," when Mr. Walker and Diana Palmer finally tied the knot. Of course there's no prize for guessing what spurred that memory being dredged up from my brain's vault. After a torrid relationship Sara Bain and Detective Sergeant Thomas Barrett  are no sooner finishing their last I do's in a church in Bethnel Green when chaos breaks out. Murder in the crypt!

It's fitting that the action takes place in the caverns and crypts under the church, in the hazy fog of the day.  All is shades of grey frequently stained by the bizarre. Mediums and criminals mix. A clever title that looks to the interests of the day through a different lens.

Sara Bain / Barrett is a complex character. A crime photographer and reporter for the Daily World newspaper, she's loyal, determined, gifted and haunted.

Haunted by her childhood, by her father's life, by her mother's hardness. Her father,

"Benjamin Bain, had been missing for twenty-four years...The prime suspect in the 1866 murder of a young girl, he’s a fugitive from the law." Sara and her newly found half sister Sally have reunited with him and are trying to prove his innocence.

This next episode of Sara's life is no less harrowing than the previous.

Relationships are bruised and mended with new understandings. Once again, as one door closes another opens beckoning us on with Sara. I think reading this without reference to former parts of the series reduces an understanding of Sara and her group of 'family', including Lord Hugh Stanton and Mick O'Reilly which impacts the reader’s deeper perspective. I am always on tenterhooks with Sara. She's an unusual character, likeable and yet not, even shocking at times. From the beginning I've had this love/hate relationship with her. Even so, her story is never dull.

A Crooked Lane ARC via NetGalley 

Please note: Quotes taken from an advanced reading copy maybe subject to change

(Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.)