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This is the first adventure of Thomas Llewellyn, assistant to Holmes-like private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker in Victorian London. Llewellyn, a Welshman, attended Magdalen College, Oxford and was also incarcerated in Oxford Castle for eight months for petty theft. He is down on his luck and ready to jump into the Thames and end it all, when he is hired as assistant to Cyrus Barker in March 1884. Barker puts Llewellyn through some bizarre tests before telling him he has the job. They go to the East End for lunch, then Barker sends Thomas on a series of errands where Llewellyn is outfitted for his new position, before going to Barker's elegant home at Elephant and Castle, south of the river. Thomas meets Jacob Maccabee, factotum, butler, bodyguard and housekeeper for the Barker menage and learns that he is to be secretary, assistant and manager. Inspector Terrence Poole of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard calls Barker and Llewellyn in to view the body of a Polish Jew who bears a resemblance to Christ and has been crucified. Actually, Sir Moses Montefiore summoned Barker to the morgue. Montefiore wants Barker to make sure that this is an isolated killing and not a concerted effort by Christian hate groups who want to see the Jews eliminated, or at least thrown out of England. The author makes it clear that anti-semitism might not be the only answer. The number of Eastern European Jews entering Britain had increased tremendously recently because of the pogroms in Poland and Russia, and the earlier immigrants, as well as the working class Brits, are alarmed that the new arrivals will take their menial jobs away from them. There have been several more adventures of Barker and Llewellyn, and I will certainly seek them out, if only for the authentic flavor of the streets of Victorian London. I thought that there were a couple of anachronisms in the narrative. I checked and found I was wrong. The Mafia did exist in 1884 and a man such as Cyrus Barker would have known about them, even if the general public did not.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, March 2007
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