FELICITY CARROL AND THE MURDEROUS MENACE by Patricia Marcantonio is the second novel in the Felicity Carrol Mystery series. The novel will be published on February 10th 2020 by Crooked Lane Books.
Felicity Carrol, born into wealth and privilege in Victorian Era England, is much happier spending her time hunting criminals and investigating crimes using the latest forensic methods than she is hunting for a husband and attending society functions. When the brutal murder of a prostitute in Montana reminds Felicity and one of her friends from Scotland Yard of the Jack the Ripper murder spree that had recently plagued London, Felicity travels to the United States to investigate. As more prostitutes are killed, Felicity becomes convinced that Jack the Ripper has come to Montana. And it is up to her to figure out his identity and stop him.
I found FELICITY CARROL AND THE MURDEROUS MENACE to be an interesting historical mystery. Felicity is a headstrong, intelligent lead character, but I wasn’t that much of a fan of her. While I enjoyed that she used her vast knowledge of the current forensic techniques, she came off as more of a know-it-all and a busybody. She’s just too perfect. And she’s much too modern for the time period. It was also hard for me to believe that in the late 1880s, a Scotland Yard investigator and a Montana sheriff would allow a woman to meddle in their murder investigations. It also took a giant stretch of the imagination to believe that Jack the Ripper left London and then traveled to middle-of-nowhere Montana.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.