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A review by jo_bookworm
Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar by Kate Saunders
4.0
It is nigh on 3 years since I was last with Laetitia Rodd when I discovered the first novel and then hoped for more so I was more than delighted when I got the chance to read and the review the second one. I hope there will be more.
So what do you need to know about Laetitia Rodd? A fifty something widow of an archdeacon who is kind of down on her luck financially. She lives with her landlady Mrs Benton, one time landlady of the well known poet John Keats and also Laetitia's friend and confidante.
To earn some sort of existence, Laetitia takes on private investigations normally with the advice and help of her brother, Frederick a criminal barrister who spends a lot of time avoiding his hom, wife and eleven children!
Laetitia is called to see Jacob Welland who make a last dying request to find his brother, Joshua so they can be reconciled after 15 years of not speaking.
But who has seen Joshua Welland and are all the sightings true?
To help her find out, Laetitia seeks out a couple from her and her husbands past and goes to stay with them. However she arrives into another problem and it seems that when bodies start turning up and deathbed confessions are bandied about it brings in Scotland Yard and Inspector Beard, who doesn't not necessarily hold with Laetitia's gut feelings and emotions.
Only the truth will do and surely a place of worship and contemplation will be the place to find it? Or is it all just a facade?
I was entranced by the plot and worked out part of the problem but was most distracted by the red herrings to do with the Welland brothers such was the strength of the writing.
A refreshing historical crime novel with a independent female detective and not afraid to delve perhaps into what was seen as the most deviant parts of Victorian society,
I hope I don't have to wait another three years for another book.
So what do you need to know about Laetitia Rodd? A fifty something widow of an archdeacon who is kind of down on her luck financially. She lives with her landlady Mrs Benton, one time landlady of the well known poet John Keats and also Laetitia's friend and confidante.
To earn some sort of existence, Laetitia takes on private investigations normally with the advice and help of her brother, Frederick a criminal barrister who spends a lot of time avoiding his hom, wife and eleven children!
Laetitia is called to see Jacob Welland who make a last dying request to find his brother, Joshua so they can be reconciled after 15 years of not speaking.
But who has seen Joshua Welland and are all the sightings true?
To help her find out, Laetitia seeks out a couple from her and her husbands past and goes to stay with them. However she arrives into another problem and it seems that when bodies start turning up and deathbed confessions are bandied about it brings in Scotland Yard and Inspector Beard, who doesn't not necessarily hold with Laetitia's gut feelings and emotions.
Only the truth will do and surely a place of worship and contemplation will be the place to find it? Or is it all just a facade?
I was entranced by the plot and worked out part of the problem but was most distracted by the red herrings to do with the Welland brothers such was the strength of the writing.
A refreshing historical crime novel with a independent female detective and not afraid to delve perhaps into what was seen as the most deviant parts of Victorian society,
I hope I don't have to wait another three years for another book.