March 15, 2019
The real-life Victorian police detective who was the inspiration for Charles Dickens' Mr. Bucket serves as the main character in a fast-paced historical mystery.Although this is Mason's debut novel for adults, he's an accomplished playwright. Those skills are evident in the crisp dialogue and well-structured scenes of this book. It begins with a bang in 1860 as Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field, assigned to guard Queen Victoria and Prince Albert during a public appearance, witnesses an assassination attempt. The shooter, who's arrested, is mentally ill, but Field quickly begins to suspect the man is just a tool of a conspiracy--one connected to the controversy over the new ideas of the naturalist Charles Darwin. Field's determined pursuit of the truth is sometimes snagged by his celebrity; Dickens fans, including some in the royal family, insist on calling him "Mr. Bucket" and confusing the fictional policeman with the real one. Field persists, however, plunging into a dizzyingly complex plot that takes him all over London and off to Germany. The cast of characters teems with satisfyingly despicable villains, many of them based on real aristocrats and scientists. The most villainous, however, is the memorably terrifying Decimus Cobb, a former choirboy-turned-Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter. Countering Cobb and the other bad guys are the earnestly heroic Field, his resourceful wife, a kidnapped butcher's boy, and Prince Albert, who gets a touchingly human portrayal. There are cameos by such famous figures as Karl Marx, Dickens, and, of course, Darwin. With many grisly murders and many shocking surprises along the way, the book rockets toward a last dark twist.Careful research, a driving plot, wry wit, and compelling characters make this a most entertaining read.

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Starred review from April 22, 2019
Mason, author of the YA novel The Last Synapsid, makes his adult debut with an audacious historical thriller. In 1860, Chief Det. Insp. Charles Field, the inspiration for Inspector Bucket in Dickens’s Bleak House, is part of the added security force for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert after several assassination attempts. One day, Field is guarding the route the royal couple’s carriage is taking through London when he spots 18-year-old pickpocket Stevie Patchen, who appears to be holding a weapon. Field tackles Patchen, only to realize that the youth was a decoy. The actual gunman, Philip Rendell, a former bookkeeper, is able to fire only a few stray shots at the carriage before he’s apprehended. In the ensuing confusion, someone cuts Patchen’s throat and removes one ear, leading Field to suspect a conspiracy. The intelligent plot features prominent figures of the time, including Karl Marx, who may have a link to Rendell, and Charles Darwin, whose heretical theory of evolution has unsettled some very powerful men. Wry prose and vivid period detail help make Mason’s speculations feel plausible. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman.

Starred review from May 15, 2019
Detective Inspector Charles Field (widely believed by fellow Londoners to be the inspiration for Charles Dickens' popular Inspector Bucket) hunts the Chorister, a Faginesque killer determined to prevent Charles Darwin's controversial theory from destroying Britain's social order. While coordinating security for Victoria and Albert's latest public appearance, Field intercepts an assassination attempt stinking of conspiracy. His suspicions are confirmed when the would-be assassin and the pickpocket he hired to distract police are both found with their throats slashed and a single ear removed. Their killer's trademark mutilation leads Field and his partner to the murder of a student who claimed to overhear his Oxford dons plotting against Darwin, and, when they track the Chorister to a scholarly debate on evolution, Field's partner is killed. As the vengeful, determined Field closes in, the conspirators attempt to change their plans. But the Chorister refuses to be called off, launching an ambitious plot against the royal couple that hinges on his ragtag gang of terror-motivated criminals and on Tom Ginty, a young butcher's apprentice whom the Chorister has molded into a deadly disciple. Mason's Dickensian London, layered with gritty, horror-tinged period details and the imaginative interweaving of Typhoid Mary and the underworld's grave-robbing industry, provides a rare time-traveling experience for historical-mystery readers. The novel shares the edgy appeal of Caleb Carr's The Alienist (1994) and Louis Bayard's Mr. Timothy (2003).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)