Genre: Mystery, Historical
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About The Book
Part two of The Clearwater Mysteries picks up seamlessly from the events of ‘Deviant Desire.’
While the notorious Ripper murders have ceased, Viscount Clearwater finds himself plunged into a web of intrigue following the discovery of an intercepted telegram, an enigmatic coded invitation, and the looming threat of exposure. The question of whether the East End Ripper still lurks in the shadows haunts him, compelling the viscount to once again risk everything to safeguard his reputation.
Adding to the complexity of the mystery is the arrival of James Wright, a novice servant grappling with the turbulence of first same-sex love, and the unresolved emotions Archer harbours for his recently dismissed footman, Thomas.
In this suspenseful narrative, treacherous forces conspire to unveil Clearwater’s homosexuality and shatter his social standing. Only the unwavering bonds of loyalty and friendship can shield him and his loved ones as he battles to protect his youthful paramour, Silas, and the close-knit community of devoted servants.
Set against the backdrop of a fictionalized England in 1888, ‘Twisted Tracks’ seamlessly blends elements of mystery, adventure, and romance. It stands as the second instalment in The Clearwater Mystery series, earning praise from readers for its well-crafted characters and the inclusion of intriguing historical tidbits.
The Review
The most important thing about this second installment of the Clearwater books is that we meet Jimmy Wright. A slightly-too-old messenger boy for the Royal Mail’s telegraph office, Jimmy, like Elias Hawkins in the first Clearwater book, has his life and his world turned upside down. The connection between the two books is, of course, Archer Riddington, Viscount Clearwater, the unexpected heir to a great noble title and estate.
Once more Jackson Marsh digs deep into the comic/poignant social barriers that separate a messenger from a butler, and a butler from His Lordship. Americans find the social hierarchies of Victorian England fascinating, even though we sort of tried to create the same thing in the USA (if you watch Julian Fellowes The Gilded Age on television, you’ll see that in this country those barriers can dissolve completely under the right circumstances—which is not true in the British Empire, where they are built on centuries of tradition).
But it’s not just this fascinating social exploration that makes this book so rewarding (and emotionally rather confusing); it’s also a page-turning, heart-stopping adventure in which Archer calls on his experience as an officer in the Queen’s Navy to stop an insane murderer with the help of four men who are all his social inferiors, but whom he also loves. We also learn about Archer’s own family past, which, we realize, is as grim in its own way as Elias Hawkins’s life on the streets of London’s East End. The fact that Archer is what we modern men would call gay makes the whole thing dizzyingly risky.
Dickens and Trollope (two of my favorites) actually lived and wrote during the Victorian era, and thus couldn’t possibly have imagined any of the radical brotherhood that Lord Clearwater brings to the little world safe inside his great city mansion. While Marsh does very well in transmitting the language and everyday details of noble life in his stories, we have to accept that only a modern writer could even conceive that one would want to do this. I, for one, am very grateful that Marsh has decided to create this world, for it is emotionally rich and intellectually complex. Without for a moment pretending the great risks don’t matter, Marsh offers an emotional intensity that would have made Jane Austen swoon.
5 stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
