Book Review: Death at Hungerford Stairs by JC Briggs

This is the second in the series by JC Briggs with Charles Dickens (yes, that one) as the protagonist. In Death at Hungerford Stairs, Dickens and his friend, police superintendent Sam Jones, are searching for Scrap, a missing friend of theirs who lives on the streets. The body that’s discovered in the old blacking factory at Hungerford Stairs isn’t the boy they were searching for, but a stranger — and he’s been murdered. Later, another dead boy appears, killed in the same manner, and the chase is on to find the killer — and save Scrap.

I enjoyed this book very much, just as I did the first in the series, though I have to say the weaknesses are the same. On the plus side, I really loved the insight into Victorian London and the way the squalor of its poorer quarter sits side-by-side with (but overlooked by) areas of extreme wealth and opulence. Again, I think the author’s scene-setting is exceptional and felt that I was walking through London of the 1850s.

Like Dickens himself, Briggs seems to separate the minor characters, who are pretty much caricatures, from the major ones. Dickens, Sam Jones, Jones’s wife and some others feel very real, people with feelings and emotions and complex back stories (though we see a little less of them than we did in the first book, which is a bit of a shame).

The minor caricatures are all faintly comic, identifiable by street speech, odd appearance and strange names— Occy Graves, Zeb Scruggs and so on. They have back stories, too, but the telling of them, often in story form in the dialogue, doesn’t allow us the same kind of insight that we do when we’re allowed to live lives with them, as we are with Dickens and with Jones. The downside is that I couldn’t connect with them in the same way, and that was a pity because (no spoilers) even at the moment of highest drama, I was left largely unmoved by the fate of the characters involved.

I enjoyed the plot, too, though it was perhaps a little bit slender and didn’t really involve a huge amount of detecting. But it had a satisfactory ending and one which I didn’t guess.

I’d definitely read more by the same author, and this gets a solid four stars. But much as I love the description I do think less is more and I’d have sacrificed some of it for a little more plot and some deeper characterisation.

The things I don’t really like about this book are the things I don’t really like about Dickens’ works, which is something I hope the author will take as a compliment. Fans of the great man will love it, I suspect.

Thanks to Sapere Books and Netgalley for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.