Why did Staci love this book?
I’m a bit obsessed with Jack the Ripper and a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes.
I’ve read (and own) his complete works. When I learned I could read another Holmes/Watson mystery and it was about Jack, I jumped on it. No, it’s not written by Doyle, but the author did a great job replicating his voice and the detective’s investigative skills. It was like visiting old friends.
There’s something that speaks to me about the Victorian Era—the simpler times, the lyrical language, the atmosphere. This story drew me in by amplifying all those things. And the footnotes, though few and unobtrusive, came in handy a couple of times when there was a historical term I didn’t know.
Mystery, characters, mood, tone… all brilliantly combine. I couldn’t put it down.
1 author picked Dust and Shadow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
In Dust and Shadow Sherlock Holmes hunts down Jack the Ripper with impeccably accurate historical detail, rooting the Whitechapel investigation in the fledgling days of tabloid journalism and clinical psychology. This astonishing debut explores the terrifying prospect of hunting down one of the world's first serial killers without the advantage of modern forensics or profiling. Sherlock's desire to stop the killer who is terrifying the East End of London is unwavering from the start, and in an effort to do so he hires an "unfortuate" known as Mary Ann Monk, the friend of a fellow streetwalker who was one of…