Lee Jackson, Arrow 2003, £6.99,
pb, 296pp, ISBN 0099439999
When ‘The Brick Lane Butterfly’, late of the London stage,
is murdered, a mysterious figure throws herself from Blackfriars Bridge. This
is the tantalising beginning of a story that carefully leads the reader around
the foreboding streets of Victorian London whist the crime is solved. With the
addition of some quirky, vivid characters, it’s very much Dickens’s territory,
but the book has its own life, its own rhythm.
The story is told in present tense making the events seem
very immediate. There are flashbacks to previous happenings, but these are
married seamlessly into the narrative. It is also told in part by Nat Meadows
whose real identity is uncertain. She remains unknowable, and in the hands of a
less skilled author this might have been annoying, however Jackson simply makes
it compelling. By the end of the story, the killer is revealed, but the
underlying cycle seems to begin again. A very satisfying mystery.
S Garside-Neville