Genre: Historical, Mystery, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About The Book
Such games we played in those dark days.
The Metropolitan Police suspect Lord Clearwater of being the infamous East End Ripper, the murderer responsible for the horrific deaths of five young men in 1888. Without proof to the contrary, Clearwater and everyone connected to him are finished, including his charities, the Larkspur Academy, and everyone at Delamere House.
The only way to save Clearwater and everyone associated with him is for Jack Merrit and his men to uncover the Ripper’s true identity and find the only evidence that can reveal the truth; a document that may not even exist — the Ripper Diary.
As the hunt intensifies, the return of the notorious murderer, Lucas Temple, and a wave of poisonings plunge London into chaos. Following clues from the past and present, Jack and his men uncover an unbelievable conspiracy that links the Ripper, Temple, and Clearwater himself.
With time running out, a city-wide catastrophe looming, and the Ripper Diary still beyond his grasp, Jack must outwit a ruthless enemy before everything he holds dear is destroyed in what could be the Delamere detectives’ deadliest case.
The Delamere Dilemma is the twelfth and final book in the Delamere Files series. It contains a spoiler for anyone who has not read the first Clearwater Mystery, ‘Deviant Desire.’ However, whether you have been following the Clearwater world from the start or not, your enjoyment of this series finale will not be affected.
The Review
The Delamere Dilemma is, at least nominally, the grand finale of the entire 30-book series. In its byzantine narrative we see the intersection of two multi-faceted murder mysteries, one launched in the Clearwater series, and the other part of the Delamere world. These are sinister storylines, and Marsh’s love of complicated puzzles and arcane symbolism makes all of his books intense.
However, what really has made every one of these books magical for me is the people. Starting with Archer Riddington (Lord Clearwater) himself, and expanding outward through several layers of servants, staff, and students—all of whom become friends and trusted confidants—every single character has a distinctive voice and personality. Except for the evil ones (and there are a few doozies), I loved them all.
The Delamere books grew from the connection between Jack Merrit, a London cabbie in his twenties, and Larkin Chase, a journalist who drags Jack into a crime investigation and then steers him to Jimmy Wright at the Delamere Detectives. Jack and his brother William (who we would think of as mildly autistic) build new lives, at first under the tutelage of Jimmy Wright, and then increasingly on their own working with other recruits to Lord Clearwater’s cause who they find along the way.
In this final book, a pair of young brothers, Simeon and Aaron Felman, among those rescued along the way, become part of a critical, high-anxiety plot to save everything Lord Clearwater has built. It goes beyond outwitting a sociopathic serial killer as Merrit realizes he’s up against the most terrifying madman England has ever known.
It’s a thrilling adventure and a remarkable finale for such an epic literary compendium. I picked up the Delamere Files series first; and then, having read those ten books, realized I needed to read the first two series that Jackson Marsh wrote first. I finished the Clearwater Mysteries (ten books) and still have three more of the Larkspur Mysteries (seven in all) to read. Each of these three splendid series has its own personality, and its own group of characters; but all of them showcase Marsh’s marvelous use of language and immersive world-building that takes the reader back to late Victorian England.
It is not, however, just a romantic fantasy: it’s narrative tour-de-force and a powerful study of social ills, class injustice, and the existence of what we would call a gay subculture in a world impossibly hostile and cruel to sexual nonconformists. Nothing remotely like this has ever been published by the mainstream book world. I am so glad I found it.
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.
