Review: Kept: A Victorian Mystery

Though billed as a mystery, British novelist and biographer ("Orwell," "Thackeray") Taylor's atmospheric and literary tale of death, madness, love (well, lust, at least) and skullduggery is more of a classic Victorian gothic melodrama than a mystery.

Although the two subject corpses roughly define the boundaries of the narrative, the murderers - if there are any - are not of burning importance. The reader will be more curious about Isabel Ireland, widow of the first corpse, Mr. Henry Ireland, and ward of the second, an eccentric naturalist and recluse, Mr. James Dixey. Isabel, you see, is mad. Or is she?

The only thing we know for sure is that she's locked up in Dixey's manor house and has not been seen in public since her husband's death in a riding accident three years earlier, in 1863.

The novel opens with a mysterious scene in which two men journey into the Scottish Highlands on a cold April evening and plunge into frigid water to steal two rare bird eggs. Dunbar is the intrepid eggman, Dewar is his luckless assistant. Though both deliver the prize to Dixey, whose study is filled with stuffed birds and beasts and displays of rare eggs, we hardly see Dunbar again (the more interesting of the pair) while Dewar becomes a hapless pawn in a plot not of his making.

The novel moves leisurely from scene to scene and character to character, using letters, diary entries, newspaper accounts and criminal depositions as well as anecdotal narrative to tell its wonderfully convoluted story.

Through an array of characters, Taylor explores the gradients of Victorian class and character. There's Esther, Dixey's new servant girl, curious about the locked room upstairs and willing to take a chance on a handsome footman and Mr. Crabbe, Henry Ireland's buttoned-up lawyer whose secrets leave him open to the machinations of clever, unscrupulous, daring Mr. Pardew, who schemes a big score for himself and any confederates left alive.

There's Mr. Dixey's neighbor clergyman who pines for a better place and a wife to go with it, and the efficient and talented Capt. McTurk, a London police detective with a prodigious memory and tenacity to match. And there are numerous supporting characters, from a witty cameo by George Eliot to the sleazy ministrations of Pardew's assistant, Mr. Grace.

What there is not is a main character to latch on to. McTurk might have served, but we don't meet him in person until two thirds of the way through and while there is a narrator, it is an omniscient, authorial voice that makes only a few appearances. While this lack is not a small thing, the novel is so well written, so exuberant and so wonderfully complex, most readers will love it anyway and fans of 19th century literature will relish Taylor's many allusions and homages, acknowledged in a detailed appendix of chapter notes.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Lynn Harnett

Please Note: Books reviewed are usually provided by the publisher, author, or an agent. Reviewers usually get to keep the book.

Book Review: Kept: A Victorian Mystery

Please Note: Books reviewed are usually provided by the publisher, author, or an agent. Reviewers usually get to keep the book.