Genre: Historical, Mystery
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
Get It On Amazon
About The Book
December 1889.
Silas Hawkins, once a trickster from the slums, is now the public face of the Clearwater Foundation. As London society gathers to celebrate its success, and Prince Albert Victor considers becoming its new patron, life for Archer, Silas and the crew could not be better.
But everyone has a past, especially Silas, a man ripe for blackmail.
Photographs, demands, a dead photographer and a mystery amid the influenza pandemic of 1889, it falls to James, Silas and Fecker to find the blackmailer before Silas’ sordid past leads to public downfall.
But then Silas disappears, and all James has is a burnt letter, a missing railway timetable and a man with two names. He also has Fecker, and together, they must race to solve the riddle and find Silas before he kills either the blackmailer or himself.
Negative Exposure is the ninth Clearwater Mystery. The series blends fact with fiction, mystery with adventure, love with lust, and is best read in order. (You’ll get more from this book and book ten if you have read the non-mystery prequel, ‘Banyak & Fecks’.)
The Review
The penultimate book in the Clearwater series, this nail-biting adventure begins at a triumphal fundraising gala at the Lyceum Theater in London in 1889. After the performance, Archer Clearwater gives a speech, while his staff and close friends cheer him on, and London society applauds.
Things devolve pretty quickly after that, with another double-pronged distraction that rises up to threaten everything Lord Clearwater (and the reader) holds dear. Archer and Thomas (his butler) are called to Paris to see to the dowager Lady Clearwater, who has fallen ill, apparently from the new influenza epidemic that is sweeping Europe (but has not yet reached England).
At the same moment, Silas Hawkins, Archer’s private secretary and paramour, is faced with a blackmail attempt, using photographs he was paid to pose for three years earlier, before he ever knew of Lord Clearwater. The staff at Clearwater House decamp for Larkspur Hall to get away from the threat of disease, while Silas, Jimmy, and Andreij must solve the mystery of the blackmailer and find their way to Wales to join the rest of the household.
Most of the action concerns Jimmy Wright, the head of the Clearwater Agency – no longer a servant of Lord Clearwater, but a business associate. Once again, in classic Jackson Marsh fashion, Jimmy has to use his detection skills to solve two mysteries: who is trying to blackmail Silas, and why. A third puzzle is added when Silas suddenly disappears. As always, the reader gets information that is not shared by all the players in the drama, and the tension builds against a backdrop of a global pandemic that would ultimately kill hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
The theme of blackmail over pornographic pictures will be revisited in the Delamere Files series, in a book titled “Holywell Street.” The detective’s reliance on the telegraph and train schedules is at the center of the plot arc, reminding us constantly that everything was more complicated in 1889, and tossing in bits of emerging science and technology to liven up the action. And always at the core of the story’s emotional power is Archer Clearwater’s love for his band of brothers, and determination to bring justice to a corrupt and unjust world. It’s a tall order, and provides excitement and satisfaction in equal measure.
A pretty decisive surprise ends the book, setting us all up for the last chapter in the series, “The Clearwater Inheritance.”
Five 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.
