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One early summer night in 1893, Victor Narraway, the head of Special Branch, awakens Thomas Pitt with an urgent message: There is a bomb threat from unknown anarchists. Racing to the scene, they find people being evacuated and explosions tearing buildings apart.
Narraway and Pitt chase after fleeing suspects and end up in the tenements at Long Spoon Lane. Pitt, new to the Special Branch, feels clumsy. He finds himself in a huge gunfight and shooting at a fellow human for the very first time.
Inside the building they find two live anarchists and one dead man, Lord Landsborough's only son, Magnus. It's obvious to Pitt that because of the dead man's position, the police couldn't have shot Magnus Landsborough. Did his fellow anarchists kill him? Or was it an escaping murderer who was neither a policeman nor an anarchist?
When Pitt questions one of the imprisoned anarchists about the motive for the bombing, he exclaims --- with great passion and terror --- that it was in protest over the corrupt police force. His accusations of evil, vicious, greedy policemen encompass the region covered by Pitt's old station. Surely things have not gone so wrong in the year since he left? The anarchist's claim eats away at Pitt. The morality of the organization he has spent his adult life serving is at stake.
While the anarchists accuse a policeman of shooting Landsborough, the police believe that a fellow anarchist was the murderer. Pitt puts himself in mortal danger in order to delve into this mystery as well as the distressing question of the corrupt police.
Pitt, his wife Charlotte, and their aunt Vespasia are horrified when Lady Landsborough, the mother of the slain man, supports the move to arm policemen, allow them to question servants in secret, and permit them to search people and their homes without just cause. The proposed measures would make the police too powerful, Pitt and his family believe, and destroy the privacy of law-abiding citizens.
Pitt's previous co-worker and friend, Samuel Tellman, steadfastly lays his job and life on the line to assist Pitt while Pitt's old despised enemy, Charles Voisey, appears to be his ally. However, Pitt knows that Voisey is untrustworthy and full of revenge toward Pitt. Is Voisey setting him up?
There is much to love in LONG SPOON LANE. The characters are subtly many-layered. Fans of this series, with its amazingly well-drawn historical details, know the delight of time traveling back to Victorian England, while the question of police power against terrorist activity continues to be a timely theme. Unexpected plot points and well-crafted motivations enliven a plot that plods a bit at times, challenging readers as the characters engage in a few too many conversations that sometimes cover previously covered ground.
Although I felt that more action would have balanced the slow parts of the story, I found LONG SPOON LANE to be an altogether intriguing and enjoyable mystery.
--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (Terryms2001@yahoo.com)
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