Death of an Old Master

December 8, 2003
In Dickinson's third well-paced Victorian mystery (after 2003's Death and the Jubilee
), devoted family man Lord Francis Powerscourt investigates the murder of a distant relative, art historian Christopher Montague, found garroted in his London flat. Suspects abound, from both the victim's personal and professional life. Powerscourt soon learns that Montague was having an affair with the wife of an older man who vanishes right after the body's discovery. The murderer's theft of all the scholar's papers suggests that their rumored contents, which would disclose a sophisticated and extensive forged-art ring, motivated the killer. The aristocrat is his usual quick study as he infiltrates the world of the dealers peddling the work of the Old Masters, and he uses his network of sources, including his wife, to find proof of the frauds targeting American nouveaux riches. After a second murder by strangulation, the noose appears to tighten around the cuckold, whose trial in classic Perry Mason fashion becomes the vehicle for the disclosure of the truth with a plausible fair-play solution that will satisfy traditional mystery fans. Dickinson nicely blends action and dogged sleuthing, and his husband-wife pair of detectives is both more personable and believable than similar Victorian duos created by Anne Perry and Robin Paige. This neatly plotted effort should gain him wider notice and the larger readership he deserves.