Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
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.
Related reads
If you liked Person or Persons Unknown
The Price of Murder
by Bruce Alexander
The tenth (and posthumous) Sir John Fielding. Bruce Alexander's widow finished what he had begun, and the result is more graceful than continuation novels usually are.
Jack Knave and Fool
by Bruce Alexander
The fifth Sir John Fielding mystery. The blind magistrate investigates a murder at the Drury Lane Theatre. Bruce Alexander at his most relaxed.
Color of Death
by Bruce Alexander
The seventh Sir John Fielding novel. Bruce Alexander on race, theft, and 1770s London. Quietly one of the strongest in the series.
Smuggler's Moon
by Bruce Alexander
The eighth Sir John Fielding. Bruce Alexander takes the blind magistrate to the Kentish coast for smuggling, dragoons, and the kind of countryside violence London does not see.
An Experiment in Treason
by Bruce Alexander
The ninth Sir John Fielding mystery. Benjamin Franklin makes a cameo. Bruce Alexander writing 1770s espionage at the official level.
The Winter Queen
by Boris Akunin
The first Erast Fandorin novel. A young clerk in 1876 Moscow investigates an apparent suicide and falls down a labyrinth.
More by this author