Book
The Isolated Séance
First published 2023
London, 1895. Former Baker Street Irregular Timothy Badger has opened a consulting detective agency with Benjamin Watson, a sharp and scientifically minded partner who shares his ambition but not always his instincts. Their first substantial client asks them to explain the death of Horace Quinn, stabbed through the heart during a séance while supposedly attempting to contact a deceased business associate. Nearly everyone in Quinn’s household has a plausible grievance, and Tim and Benjamin must prove that they can investigate without simply waiting for their mentor Sherlock Holmes to supply an answer.
The case is built around the enormous late-Victorian appetite for spiritualism, séances and psychical investigation. Mediumship attracted sincere believers, fashionable curiosity, scientific scrutiny and professional fraud in equal measure, making a darkened séance room an ideal setting for a mystery about evidence and misdirection. Westerson also uses the pair’s new agency to explore the growth of private detection in a city fascinated by Holmesian reasoning, contrasting sensational claims about the supernatural with the practical work of interviewing servants, tracing movements and testing physical clues.
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