[Review] Miranda Carter: 'The Printer's Coffin'

We first encountered the Jeremiah Blake and William Avery in Miranda Carter's first mystery 'The Strangler Vine', which was set in India in the 1830s.

[Buy the book here]

In 'The Printer's Coffin' (originally published as 'The Infidel Stain') both Blake and Avery have returned to England. Avery, promoted to captain, has grown wary of war and his new wife couldn't get used to the climes of Afghanistan. Then Avery is asked to travel to London to assist Blake in a private investigation into the gruesome murder of a couple of printers. Blake has been commissioned to look into the matter by Lord Allington, a wealthy philanthropist and social reformer.

The murdered printers were in the sordid business of printing pornographic material, although Miranda Carter helpfully mentions that the word 'pornography' frustratingly did not came into use until the second half of the nineteenth century. But the case isn't as clear-cut as that, because others also fall at the hands of the vile murderer. Strangely, the newly formed London police force seems disinclined to investigate the murders.

Entwined into the story are the feared Chartists, a political movement for political reform that had the form of a protest movement to better the lives of the poorest. The squalor of the Rookeries, London's overcrowded city slums, is painted in great detail. Miranda Carter portrays the living conditions with great piety and feeling.

I feared at some point in the story that Miranda Carter would fall into the trap of writing too much history (and thus too little mystery) into the story, but she deftly managed to insert just enough of both.

In the end 'The Printer's Coffin', named after the flat surface of a hand-operated printing press, is a very satisfying and richly detailed mystery that had me order the next novel of Miranda Carter post-haste.

'The Strangler Vine' is highly recommended. Buy the book here.