Under a Veiled Moon

Under a Veiled Moon- Karen Odden

Crooked Lane Books

Release Date: October 11, 2022

Rating: 📚📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: One night, as the pleasure boat the Princess Alice makes her daily trip up the Thames, she collides with the Bywell Castle, a huge iron-hulled collier. The Princess Alice shears apart, throwing all 600 passengers into the river; only 130 survive. It is the worst maritime disaster London has ever seen, and early clues point to sabotage by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who believe violence is the path to restoring Irish Home Rule. 

For Scotland Yard Inspector Michael Corravan, born in Ireland and adopted by the Irish Doyle family, the case presents a challenge. Accused by the Home Office of willfully disregarding the obvious conclusion, and berated by his Irish friends for bowing to prejudice, Corravan doggedly pursues the truth, knowing that if the Princess Alice disaster is pinned on the IRB, hopes for Home Rule could be dashed forever.

Corrovan’s dilemma is compounded by Colin, the youngest Doyle, who has joined James McCabe’s Irish gang. As violence in Whitechapel rises, Corravan strikes a deal with McCabe to get Colin out of harm’s way. But unbeknownst to Corravan, Colin bears longstanding resentments against his adopted brother and scorns his help.
 
As the newspapers link the IRB to further accidents, London threatens to devolve into terror and chaos. With the help of his young colleague, the loyal Mr. Stiles, and his friend Belinda Gale, Corravan uncovers the harrowing truth—one that will shake his faith in his countrymen, the law, and himself.

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Inspector Corrovan of Scotland Yard, now acting superintendent at Wapping, is faced with a double problem in  Under a Veiled Moon, Karen Odden's newest historical mystery. The crash of the Princess Alice and the Bywell Castle on the Thames is the largest maritime accident to happen in London's history. Rising anti-Irish public sentiment wants to find the Irish, specifically the Irish Republican Brotherhood, guilty of sabotaging the crafts. Corrovan, Irish himself, wants to find the guilty party whether they are Irish or English- a highly unpopular sentiment as newspapers whip the general populace into a frenzy with or without worrying about facts. Knowing that political chances for Irish Home Rule are slipping farther away the longer the anti-Irish sentiments continue, that his job is on the line the longer he takes on the case, and that more lives are placed in jeopardy as the case takes him even closer to home, make this Corrovan's most difficult case yet.

Under a Veiled Moon takes place several months after the events of Karen Odden's first Inspector Corrovan book, Down a Dark River, although you don't necessarily need to have read the first book in the series to read and enjoy this one. If you did read DADR (and you should!) you'll be please to see the growth in Corrovan- both personally and professionally. A Scotland Yard investigator, he has now been given the temporary charge of Wapping Yard, a station he began at and knows well. He's in charge of more men, writing reports, and taking on a variety of more responsibilities than as 'just' an inspector. Personally he has taken to heart the lessons he learned on the "river murders" as he calls them and is working hard to temper his natural inclinations to act like a bull in a china shop and charge forward with every thing. He works better with his superior, Howard Vincent and is more empathetic with witnesses and victims when interviewing them. He often has trouble bringing that empathy to his young adopted brother, Colin Doyle. He sees Colin taking wrong paths and not listening to sense and you can feel Michael's frustration radiating off the pages in each scene between them. It's obvious he's as frustrated with himself for not being able to magically fix whatever problems Colin has as he is with Colin for falling in with gangs and trying to seem more of "a man". Michael still has lessons to learn about his own self-awareness and impact on others, and I think he has begun to realize that.

Revenge, regret, and prejudice swirl together at the heart of Veiled Moon: who feels what and what do we do with those feelings. Can we move past something if we understand it is an accident vs knowing someone is responsible for it? What does it mean if someone is responsible for something terrible? The IRB blame England for everything terrible that has happened to the Irish people and have begun to use violence instead of words to demand Home Rule. The reader sees the reaction of the average Londoner, which is often hatred of the Irish for these revenge acts, lumping all the Irish together as 'guilty' just as the IRB have done with the English. Neither side seems willing to admit that they both share blame, and that most people are innocent of any wrong doing and should be left alone. Politics and terrorism have changed the world scene and Corrovan, the Princess Alice, the Bywell Castle, and the innocent people of London are now caught in the middle without realizing it. 

There is a lot of emotion in this book, both for Corrovan and for the reader. Corrovan must deal with family stresses as well as having to swallow all the hate being thrown at him as he tries to do his job. The empathetic style of writing Odden has means that the reader feels Corrovan's pain, his frustration, his anger, his worry. He sees both London in general and Whitechapel in particular changing thanks to this new kind of terror and it frightens him, as it does us, since we know it will become the new normal instead of an outlier. 

As for the mystery itself- it is a brilliant puzzle of red herrings, clues within clues, layers within layers, and plots within plots that come together in the end to create a shocking and tragic solution. 

If you love historical mysteries, and if you read and loved Down a Dark River, then I have no doubt you will love Under a Veiled Moon as much as I did.  Make this one a must read on your TBR pile!

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