Person or Persons Unknown

Bruce Alexander's Sir John Fielding novels take a real historical figure (the half-brother of the novelist Henry Fielding, blind from his twenties, and a working magistrate at Bow Street in 1760s London) and build a careful procedural series around him. Person or Persons Unknown puts Sir John on the trail of a possible Jack-the-Ripper precursor in the Covent Garden brothels.

The book is narrated by Jeremy Proctor, Sir John's young ward, and the voice is one of Alexander's best inventions. Jeremy is observant without being precocious, and his slowly widening understanding of London's lower districts gives the book its moral spine. Sir John himself is a wonderful character, principled without being prim, and gradually losing the last of his eyesight without losing any of his sharpness.

The mystery resolves cleanly. The pleasure of the book is its specificity about a London most historical novels skip. Four stars. The series rewards patience and reading in order.