Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, called Sally Smith’s A Case of Mice and Murder “A brilliant English mystery debut”, one of her favorites of 2024. Author Dana Stabenow loved it. You might want to pre-order a copy through the Webstore. https://tinyurl.com/5cfdjeds.
Here’s Stabenow’s review of A Case of Mice and Murder(The Trials of Gabriel Ward).
For any fan of British police procedurals, even if the crime is set in 1901 and the current London police are less Dalgliesh and more Dalziel, only not as smart.
And it wouldn’t matter anyway because the murder happens in the Temple, that cloistered fifteen acres in the heart of London where British law was studied and practiced, and still is, and where the police are not allowed to enter, and still aren’t. Yes, you read that right.
But back to 1901, where the Lord Chief Justice is murdered, his body left where Sir Gabriel Ward, barrister, stumbles across it on his way into work one morning. To his further horror, Gabriel is placed in charge of the investigation, with a not-so-veiled threat of being dispossessed of his chambers if he refuses.
Which is going to interfere with his defense of publisher Herbert Moore, who four years before printed a children’s book, Millie the Temple Church Mouse, which has become an unexpected hit, relieved all of Moore & Sons’ debts, and provided a comfortable living for him and his family, not to mention has supported the Temple Church by vastly increasing its congregation.
Millie the Mouse, born in a hole in the round nave of the Temple Church to loving mouse parents, had grown up to become, thanks to her early exposure to the beauties of the Temple services, a devout mouse dedicated to performing acts of kindness for the congregation. These acts, necessarily limited in scope by her species and size, nonetheless assumed saintly proportions in the hands of Miss Cadamy.
(One gets the distinct feeling that Smith had even more fun writing the story of Millie than she did the story of Gabriel.)
The difficulty lies in the authorship of the book, which was left on Moore & Sons doorstep in a plain brown wrapper with no identification of its author other than a name, Harriet Cadamy, that Moore could not trace to any living person. Now a claimant to the rodentiary throne has materialized and Moore & Sons are being sued.
And now Gabriel, with the assistance of an inexperienced but promising young constable who nevertheless shows promise, vide his name, Wright, is set to the additional and equally onerous task of ferreting out the Lord Chief Justice’s murderer. Which, never fear, he does, although it certainly pries him out of his comfort zone, and out of the Temple, which he hasn’t left in forty years.
The scenes in court are worthy of Michael Gilbert
Mr. Justice Anderson, a judge of great experience and little patience, entered, and looked characteristically at the clock in order to convey that not a moment of court time was to be wasted.
And not forgetting the scenes in chambers.
She…leaned across the desk, her bosom perilously close to the inkwell. Gabriel backed against his bookshelves.
A thoroughly enjoyable read, and a pretty good mystery, too. I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series.