A wicked read this way comes

This debut tale has all the familiar trappings of Gothic melodrama.

You have to give points to a starter novelist who gamely tries to kick new life into an old genre. But in the end, you have to admit that the old genre is still the old genre.

In her first novel, English newcomer Laura Carlin produces a full-on Gothic thriller. It’s got lashings of the expected materials. Set in early-19th-century England in the years just before Victoria took the throne, it has many footsteps-in-the-fog scenes in squalid old London. Plus a degenerate, opium-addicted squire up to no good. Plus a chase through a dark tunnel. Plus “resurrection men” killing people to sell corpses to anatomy students. Plus a hidden document that conveniently reveals everything about a fiendish plot. Hidden family secrets, babies swapped at birth, contested inheritance, etc.

Carlin’s trick is to combine these familiar Gothic trappings with a detective story as two women, Hester and Rebekah, join forces to get to the bottom of things. And for good measure they are lesbians, which adds a love-story element. No explicit sex, mind, as readers of Gothic romance aren’t into that. Just fondling and yearning and OTT passionate words. And some “damsel in distress” scenes where the damsel is waiting to be rescued by another damsel.

If Gothic melodrama is your cup of poison, this one does the trick. Carlin writes well and doesn’t produce any glaring anachronisms. Only occasionally does the dialogue sound a tad 21st century. But you do have to negotiate two scenes in which old crones conveniently explain all the mysteries and loose ends. These are like the final moments of an antique Hollywood movie.

One for the addicts, who won’t be disappointed.

THE WICKED COMETH, by Laura Carlin (Hodder & Stoughton, $35)