Murder in Gramercy Park
Author: Victoria Thompson
Copyright: 2001 (Berkley) 329 pgs.
Series: 3rd in the Gaslight Mystery series
Sensuality: N/A
Who: Sarah Brandt (midwife) and Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy
Where & When: Autumn 1896
Summary: At a summons from Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy, Sarah arrives at the elegant home of famed magnetic healer Edmund Blackwell to find his wife in labor — and the good doctor dead from an apparent suicide. Only Malloy sees what no one else wants to: that Blackwell was murdered in his own home. After a successful delivery, the Blackwell baby falls mysteriously ill. Relying on her nurse’s training and women’s intuition, Sarah discovers the source of the baby’s sickness — and discovers a scandal that leads Malloy’s investigation down a gilded path paved with greed, deception, and desire.
Comments: At the beginning of the book, Frank is relieved that the case he’s been assigned to isn’t a murder and there is no possible way that Sarah can somehow get involved. Poor guy. Shortly after he arrives, he learns that the very pregnant wife of the late Edmund Blackwell is the person who found the body. The shock has sent her into full labor. There’s no question as to who Malloy will send for, and his consolation is that the case is a suicide and there won’t be any need for Sarah to get more involved. Again, Malloy is proved wrong, this time by the evidence at the crime scene. He’s absolutely sure that the man was murdered.
Sarah becomes necessary to the investigation in her role as the midwife/nurse to Mrs. Blackwell and her baby. Letitia Blackwell is confined to her bed and refuses to receive visitors, and it is improper for Frank to intrude. Sarah’s status also allows her to question the staff who are leery of Malloy. Even her Knickerbocker, blue-blood family name comes in handy when dealing with Blackwell’s more influential clients. She’s more than happy to be involved in any way possible, and she is careful when teasing Malloy, for fear he will exclude her from the investigation entirely.
Before long, suspects and motives mount up. It’s like a game of Clue, where Sarah and Frank know the weapon and the room (study/library, with the revolver), but no way to easily eliminate the “who”. Could it have been Amos Potter, Blackwell’s business partner who seems smitten with Letitia? Was it Letitia, with her many scandalous secrets? Or maybe her over-protective father? Then there’s the young man claiming to be Blackwell’s son.
Frank spends a great deal of time at Sarah’s place, discussing the possible suspect/motive combinations and going through Dr. Brandt’s files, looking for a clue to his murder — slim that it may be. Frank continues to be more aware of his feelings toward Sarah than Sarah is about her own feelings for Frank. Sarah still associates seeing Frank with being involved in the murder investigations: anxious to exchange new intelligence and theorize the who and why.
Favorite Quote:
“How did you manage with Brian by yourself?”
“I knocked him unconscious and threw him over my shoulder. He wasn’t much trouble at all after that.”
– Sarah, Malloy (re: Frank’s son, Brian)
Started: 26 May 2008
Finished: 31 May 2008
Liked A Lot
Rating:
Murder on St. Mark's Place
2nd in the Gaslight Mystery series
Author: Victoria Thompson
ISBN: 0-425-17361-5 (Berkley)
Finished: 9 August 2007
Who: Sarah Brandt, midwife and Frank Malloy, detective
When: July 1896 — approximately three months since Murder on Astor Place
From the back: Thinking she has been summoned by German immigrant Agnes Otto to usher a new life into the world, Sarah Brandt is greeted by the news of an untimely death instead. It seems that Agnes’s beautiful sister, Gerda, had fallen into the life of a “Charity Girl”. Caught up in the false glamour of the city’s nightlife, she would trade her company — and her favors — not for money, but for lavish gifts and an evening’s entertainment. And now she was dead, victim, no doubt, of one of her “gentleman friends”.
In the second book of the Gaslight Mystery series, Sarah sets out to solve the murder of a young German girl. She enlists the aide of Frank Malloy, the widowed detective who helped her solve the murder in the first book.
This time the task is much harder. Gerda went out with several men and probably only ever knew their first names, if it wasn’t an alias. The odds are staggering but Sarah questions Gerda’s friends with the hope that she’ll get lucky. When Sarah and Frank learn that there are several, unsolved murders with the same M.O., they realize they might have a serial killer on their hands and other girls may be in danger.
On a more personal front, Sarah’s brief observation of Brian Malloy, Frank’s 3-year-old handicapped son, convinces her that the boy isn’t feeble-minded, like his father and grandmother believe. Sarah sets out to convince Frank of her theory and also recommend a surgeon who might be able to help with Brian’s club foot. In return, Frank told her how Kathleen died and has forgiven Sarah for being a midwife, just as she’s forgiven him for being a cop.
Several people are under the impression that Sarah and Frank are involved. Sarah, wanting and cherishing her independence, isn’t on the husband hunt and really doesn’t view Frank as a love interest. Yet. Frank, very much a typical man of his time and place in history, spends a great deal of time with his jaw clenched in exasperation at Sarah’s behavior. She knows he has a strong sense of justice and she uses that to her advantage. And she knows his weakness is Brian. Despite all the fuming and teeth-grinding he does because of Sarah, he’s nonetheless falling in love with her.
Though Thompson’s books don’t have the same emotional impact for me as P. B. Ryan’s Nell Sweeney books, I still like Sarah and Frank. They feel very real to me and I’m looking forward to seeing their relationship evolve.
Liked A Lot
Flashback. . .2006
After a routine delivery, Sarah visits her patient in a rooming house — and discovers that another boarder, a young girl, has been killed. At the request of Sergeant Frank Malloy, she searches the girl’s room. She discovers that the victim is from one of the most prominent families in New York — and the sister of an old friend. The powerful family, fearful of scandal, refuses to permit an investigation. But with Malloy’s help, Sarah begins a dangerous quest to bring the killer to justice.
1st in the Gaslight Mystery series
Author: Victoria Thompson
ISBN: 0-425-16896-4 (Berkley)
Finished: 26 June 2006
Who: Sarah Decker Brandt, midwife, and Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy
When: April 1896 New York City – Theodore Roosevelt is police commissioner. He served from 6 May 1895 to 19 April 1897.
I don’t know the author’s plan for this couple, but it will take a lot to get them together. They come from completely different ends of the social spectrum.
Sarah Decker Brandt comes from a very prominent family. She once socialized with the Roosevelts and the Astors: as she tells Frank, “All the Knickerbocker families know each other”. She is the widow of a doctor, Tom, who was murdered three years previously. Sarah chose to work as a midwife instead of returning to her empty and useless life as the daughter of the Felix and Elizabeth Decker. Added to Sarah’s sorrows, and motivation for being a midwife and avoiding her family, her older sister died giving birth. Maggie had chosen to fall in love with, and marry, a poor man her father did not approve of. Cut off from the family, she lived in a squalor and could not afford proper care. The mysterious death of Alicia VanDamm brings Sarah back into her old social circle, mainly because she does not trust the police. They are a corrupt bunch, and never looked into her husband’s death.
Francis “Frank” Malloy is a widower and a lowly police sergeant. His wife, Kathleen, died three years previously, after giving birth to their severely handicapped son, Brian. Frank is trying to do the best thing for Brian and his mother, who watches the boy. He wants to make captain, so he can better provided for them. That means bribes and only working on cases that offer reward money. However, his actions show that he does care about justice. Unfortunately, he also blames the death of his wife on the midwife, something that has an impact on his dealings with Sarah, just as his being a cop impacts her dealings with him.
All this baggage Sarah and Frank carry makes it difficult for each to trust the other completely.
I enjoyed this book just as much as Paige’s series. The book dealt with a subject matter very distasteful, but it hasn’t turn me off to the writer.
Trivia: this series is set around the same time as Robin Paiges’ Victorian mystery series.
Liked A Lot
