A century before this reviewer’s birth, “today’s May second,” 1850. Corpulent Queen Victoria has ruled Britain for 13 years. Aristocratic Charles Lenox has “been 23 for nine hours.” Happy birthday, Charlie! Ah, to be young, wealthy, and the son and sibling of parliamentary members, in one of England’s “more salubrious precincts” --- the tony Mayfair purlieu of 1800s London.

With the aid of improbable lackey Graham (born “to a family of tenant farmers”), novice investigator Lenox (“born to a family of aristocrats”) observes that a homicide has been “carefully plotted, and then executed flawlessly.” A letter is published in the Challenger, a dubious publication “which might justifiably arouse your skepticism,” claiming commission of the perfect crime. It is penned by “Your ponderous correspondent.” Does the publisher promulgate yellow journalism five decades before the term is coined? The epistolarian claims to have committed two murders a month apart, and foretells of a third in the coming days.

"As was I, fans of the series will be thrilled to learn more of Victorian-era life and the embryonic investigative endeavors of Charles Lenox."

Sole sibling Edmund is the primogeniture, whereby the firstborn son inherits the entire parental estate. The second and last issue, Charles Lenox, is at the mercy of his elder brother, a duke and Member of Parliament. Patriarch Sir Edward Lenox waxes philosophical as he prepares to check out of Hotel Earth. “The hardest part of losing a person, Charles, is that grief is only an absence. There is nowhere to go to touch it.”

In the midst of establishing an eligible bachelor’s household --- governed by indomitable housekeeper Mrs. Huggins --- Lenox pursues follies and foibles, such as overindulging in libations, and the unlikely profession of (virtually) unpaid sleuth. Lenox adroitly connects dots that detectives at the 31-year-old Scotland Yard don’t know exist. A huge board bearing a cadaver presumably fished from the River Thames is dry, while the body is wet, something only the inexperienced shamus observes.

Following THE INHERITANCE, this is a prequel to the 10 other installments of the Lenox series. At times the plot meanders like murky water through the Thames alluvium, a hodgepodge of word origins and Victorian artifacts. Alas, “prequels” to the stories of many who later became famous parallel this engaging tale of how Lenox came to be enthralled by detecting and solving crimes in Victoria’s era.

After all, Abraham Lincoln at age 23 [five years before 1837 Victoria’s coronation] had “no real qualifications and a very limited formal education.” Lenox had successfully completed “years at Balliol College, Oxford.”

As was I, fans of the series will be thrilled to learn more of Victorian-era life and the embryonic investigative endeavors of Charles Lenox.