Into the underworld

Allan Pinkerton started his eponymous detective agency in Chicago in 1850. He also headed the Union Intelligence Service during the Civil War. In his second novel, By Gaslight, Victoria writer Steven Price focuses on Allan’s son William who, with his brother Robert, took over the business when Allan died in 1884.

On a foundation of history, Price builds layers of fiction to create a riveting novel that is hard to put down — except I had to at times because of the sheer weight of the book. But not for long.

At the beginning of the novel, William Pinkerton is in Victorian London looking for a criminal who had eluded his father, which leads him to a former collaborator, Charlotte Reckitt. But the night he finds Charlotte, she jumps off the Blackfriars Bridge into the Thames and disappears.

Pinkerton isn’t the only one looking for her. There is another criminal from Char- lotte’s past. He hasn’t seen her for years, but it’s clear they once meant a great deal to each other.

Price does a fabulous job of describing the criminal underworld, where poverty often leads to law-breaking simply to sur- vive. Violence pervades the lives of the characters, but there are moments of tenderness.

To gaslight people means to manipulate them so they think they are going crazy. In the criminal world, appearance and reality are often confused on purpose to manipulate those who have into losing what they have.

The criminals gaslight their dupes. And Price certainly gaslights readers — with much more success.

The atmosphere of Victorian London with its intense fogs and utter filth fits the confusion and mystery that drives the plot. The details of setting are exacting, and Price evokes all the senses to describe them. His attention to detail makes it easy to picture the scenes and in some cases impossible to forget them.