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Series
The Esther & Jack Enright Mysteries follow seamstress-turned-investigator Esther and police officer Jack Enright from the Whitechapel murders of 1888 into the early Edwardian period. Assisted—and frequently endangered—by Jack’s unconventional uncle Percy, the family investigates murder, corruption, political conspiracy and crimes ignored by official institutions.
The thirteen novels trace both the changing Enright household and the transformation of London between 1888 and 1909. Ripper panic, the Oscar Wilde trials, Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, immigration, theatre, police misconduct and the suffrage campaign place domestic loyalties against public duty.
Reading order
In Whitechapel during the August Bank Holiday of 1888, seamstress Esther Jacobs learns that her friend Martha Turner has been brutally murdered. The killing is initially treated as an isolated crime, but Esther refuses to let poverty and reputation determine how seriously the victim is remembered…
London, 1891. Women report that an intruder is entering their homes, stealing intimate clothing and leaving threatening messages. With no valuables taken and no murder committed, the police dismiss the incidents as embarrassment or hysteria, despite the fear left by the recent Whitechapel killings. Esther Jacobs…
London, 1892. A young woman is found dead on a railway line, and the first assumption is suicide. Detective Inspector Jack Enright and his uncle Percy uncover her true identity, however, and discover that her death is connected to a respectable family determined to keep its…
London, 1894. Five people die during the demolition of an East End slum, and officials responsible for the clearance insist that the deaths were accidental. Sergeant Percy Enright sees signs of deliberate killing, while Jack Enright is separately asked to find a neighbour’s missing niece. The…
London, 1895. Oscar Wilde’s libel action against the Marquess of Queensberry threatens to expose private lives and prominent names in open court. Detective Inspector Percy Enright and Detective Sergeant Jack Enright are ordered to contain information that could implicate members of the political and social establishment…
London and Essex, 1896. After his transfer to a rural district, Detective Sergeant Jack Enright encounters the bodies of three infants discovered within a few months. In London, Percy Enright has found similar cases, indicating that the deaths cannot all be explained as isolated acts by…
London in 1897. Queen Victoria has ordered a Diamond Jubilee to celebrate her record-breaking sixty years on the throne. But, ten years ago, during her opulent Golden Jubilee, only the skill and daring of the Metropolitan Police had prevented her assassination and they have every reason…
London and Tilbury in 1898. Jack Enright has barely settled, somewhat uncomfortably, into his new role as Inspector of the Tilbury Docks Police when he is obliged to investigate the apparent loss of cargoes on one particular incoming vessel. At the same time, his uncle Percy…
London in 1898. The time has finally come for Percy Enright to retire from Scotland Yard. His nephew, Jack, is sad to lose a partner in the force, but Jack’s wife Esther is glad Percy won’t be getting her husband into any further scrapes. It seems…
London in 1899. Jack and Esther Enright, with their four children in tow, have recently moved to a comfortable new home. Esther has settled into her dream job as headmistress of the local private school, owned by her mentor Emily Allsop. But things are not going…
London in 1901. Join the Enrights in an unusual historical mystery! Queen Victoria’s long reign has finally ended and her firstborn son, Prince Albert Edward, is due to be crowned as King Edward VII. But from the German Embassy comes an allegation the heir apparent recently…
London in 1905. The Enrights’ lives are on the line in this latest mystery! Death will come when it will come.1905. When the leading actor in a performance of Julius Caesar is stabbed to death, the Enright family are pulled into the murder. Lucy Masefield, sister…
Britain in 1909. It’s the Enrights’ toughest case yet! The Edwardian era is in full swing and Asquith’s Liberal government is confronting several divisive issues. The Irish are demanding home rule, Germany is winning the ‘arms race’, and the suffragettes are demanding the right to equality.…