Down A Dark River

 Down A Dark River - Karen Odden

Crooked Lane Books

Release Date: November 9, 2021

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: London, 1878. One April morning, a small boat bearing a young woman’s corpse floats down the murky waters of the Thames. When the victim is identified as Rose Albert, daughter of a prominent judge, the Scotland Yard director gives the case to Michael Corravan, one of the only Senior Inspectors remaining after a corruption scandal the previous autumn left the division in ruins. Reluctantly, Corravan abandons his ongoing case, a search for the missing wife of a shipping magnate, handing it over to his young colleague, Mr. Stiles.

An Irish former bare-knuckles boxer and dockworker from London’s seedy East End, Corravan has good street sense and an inspector’s knack for digging up clues. But he’s confounded when, a week later, a second woman is found dead in a rowboat, and then a third. The dead women seem to have no connection whatsoever. Meanwhile, Mr. Stiles makes an alarming discovery: the shipping magnate’s missing wife, Mrs. Beckford, may not have fled her house because she was insane, as her husband claims, and Mr. Beckford may not be the successful man of business that he appears to be.
 
Slowly, it becomes clear that the river murders and the case of Mrs. Beckford may be linked through some terrible act of injustice in the past—for which someone has vowed a brutal vengeance. Now, with the newspapers once again trumpeting the Yard’s failures, Corravan must dredge up the truth—before London devolves into a state of panic and before the killer claims another innocent victim.

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In Karen Odden's newest historical mystery, Scotland Yard Inspector Michael Corravan must discover the murderer of a young woman who is placed in a small rowboat on the Thames. Overworked, Corravan gives the case of a missing woman to his colleague Stiles. But as more women are murdered the men discover that the missing woman and the dead girls have more in common than meets the eye. And it may be that secrets hidden in the posh Mayfair residences instead of seedy riverside docks hide the clues to solve the cases and save other innocent lives.

Unlike Odden's other books (A Trace of Deceit, A Dangerous Duet, A Lady in the Smoke) Down a Dark River features not a young woman trying to solve a mystery, but a Scotland Yard inspector.  Michael Corravan is hampered by the fact that he's Irish at a time when the English don't like the Irish, he's from Whitechapel when he's investigating the murder of upperclass women, and still prominent in the public mind is the trial of four Scotland Yard detectives for taking bribes, the Yard has been reorganized and its credit with the public is at an all-time low. Corravan wants to find the killer but his stubborn push for answers isn't getting him anything but enemies and political red tape from higher ups at the Yard. 

I loved Corravan even when I was frustrated with him. He is a complex, flawed, but basically decent man, wrestling with how to best solve cases and help others. He values his small circle of friends and family, although he doesn't always know how to show it. As his lover, author Belinda Gale puts it, Michael likes being the knight solving everyone's problems, but he doesn't like being seen as human, with all the messy emotions that come with it. He's as prickly as a porcupine, never wants to ask help of anyone, and is slow to trust. As Dark River progresses we see Corravan try to change his approach to life and maybe that's what leads to the questions he (and the reader) have to ask themselves at the end. What is justice? How are justice and revenge different? Can it be found through the law courts and police procedures or only on the streets? Are there some people so self-centered (or evil) that they can't be touched by either? Are there some crimes that can never be balanced?

In Dark River Corravan's view of himself and the secondary characters evolves over the course of the book and the reader gets a more nuanced view of people as the book progresses. His relations with others develops over the course of the book too- I especially liked how his relationship with his supervisor Vincent and junior Stiles changed over the course of the book. One character the reader sees clearly from the beginning is London- and the Thames. Karen Odden has a special talent for making her locations as much of a living, breathing character as any flesh and blood character in her books and from the slimy docks at the Thames to the glittery streets of Mayfair, she succeeds brilliantly again here.    

Down a Dark River is timely in many ways, without seeming to preach to the reader or put modern views into Victorian character's mouths. Corravan has to struggle with power throughout the book: who has it, who uses it, and what do they use it for. It appears in different places and different ways, asking Corravan and the reader to look at ever situation and person through multiple angles before reaching conclusions. Powerful men he meets try to prevent him from pursuing his investigations, while he meets women with no formal political or social power trying to do incredible acts of kindness and life changing work.  In many ways this is Corravan's wake up call to see that the people he thinks of as powerless are not the only ones without a voice, and makes him wonder how that lack of power would effect him, as well as those around him. Hopefully we will get to see more of Michael Corravan in the future, and he will hang on to the lessons he learned the hard way here, as they certainly make him a better, more compassionate detective and man. Something Victorian England needed every bit as much as we do today. 

Possible Trigger Warnings: Discussions of rape and violence