The Highgate Cemetery Murder – Irina Shapiro (Audio narrator – Imogen Church)

I greatly enjoyed what I now understand to be a first entry in at least a two part series featuring Gemma Tate, a thirty-something year old nurse who served in Crimea under Florence Nightingale and Sebastian Bell, a talented but opium using police detective. It is 1858. Victorian London. Women are decidedly expected to stay under the watchful thumb of a man if they are in any economic class that permits them to live in a home with food and heat available. Early one morning, Gemma’s brother, while visiting his wife’s grave, finds a dead woman hanging from a cross at a gravestone wearing only her chemise, a quality garment. He is a reporter who keeps a notebook on him at all times. He reports his find to the police and gives his statement. Later that day, he is in a terrible accident and Gemma is left with no living relatives. She is smart, very observant and a woman ahead of her time. She is fortunate that Inspector Bell is a man who will listen to and appreciate a woman with a brain. And we are off into multiple different homes, encountering wildly different classes of Londoners and a story of more than one heinous crime. And I cannot say more without spoilers. I would enjoy print version but listened to this one and the narrator was quite good. Highly recommend.