A book based in true crimes. Very well written, hard to put it down!
Private enquiry agents Grant and Batchelor are hired to find the lost wife of a timber merchant, but the case becomes more complicated when parts of female human bodies begin to appear floating in the Thames..

Set during the1870s in London, The Ring finds private inquiry agents Matthew Grand and James Batchelor hired by oddball timber merchant Selwyn Byng to find his kidnapped wife. Byng can’t involve police, or his wife will be killed. Since Byng isn’t forthcoming and there are too many holes in his story, Grand and Batchelor begin a half-hearted investigation. But when body parts start resurfacing in the River Thames and one part may belong to Byng’s wife, the private inquiry agents need to involve the River Police but also corrupt officials to get to the bottom of the kidnapping and the body parts.

The tone of The Ring was light-hearted. The witty banter between Grand and Batchelor was amusing as well as the colourful characters of the River Police Chief Daddy Bliss, the hard-working Doctor Kempster, the Puritanical housekeeper Mrs. Rackstraw, and the lawyer-thug Richard Knowes. But on resolution, the plot turns twisted and ugly, upsetting the light-hearted ending I expected. The large cast of characters was difficult to keep straight especially when his or her part in the plot was miniscule to extraneous and thrown in simply to keep the reader off the scent.

The Ring was an enjoyable read until the resolution of the kidnapping and the body parts. Then, it wasn’t funny any longer.
Reviewed for Historical Novel Society

Dark doings in Victorian London!

I loved the setting of this novel! The dark and forbidding underside of London in Victorian times. The mists around the Thames, the hovels, and the disappearance of Emilia Byng, the wealthy wife of a timber merchant Selwyn Byng.
Gruesomely female body parts are turning up in the waterways. Is there a link?
There's a fair smattering of humor throughout the writing and some interesting secondary characters. So all the prerequisites are in place for a cracking read, but for me this just didn't quite get to a four star read. I must admit to having trouble identifying with the main protagonists, Private enquiry agents Matthew Grand and James Batchelor.

A NetGalley ARC

I love historical mystery and this was a very good one.
The plot reminded me of an Anne Perry's mystery and it was really good and engaging.
I loved the cast of characters and the well researched historical setting.
The plot was good, it kept me hooked till the last page.
As this is part of a series I think it would be better to read the other books as it will surely help to understand the characters and the setting.
I look forward to reading other books in this series.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Severn House and Netgalley for this ARC

I’m a sucker for a good Victorian detective novel, and M. J. Trow’s “The Ring” seemed like it would fit the bill. Batchelor and grand are “enquiry agents,” a term they insist others adhere to, a profession they feel is more honorable than if they were performing the same duties for the police.

Mr. Trow paints a wonderful picture of London in the 1870s, helping the city come alive for me. Although this is Book 5 in the series, I had no trouble reading it as a standalone. The author provided enough of a backstory to give me enough knowledge of the characters. Truthfully, I felt the descriptions of London and how the major and minor characters interacted with the city were 5-star elements in this story.

This is not a deadly serious story. There is plenty of wit to go around here, some of the humor of the tongue-in-cheek variety. While the characterizations were not deep, there was enough displayed to keep the story interesting. In truth, the minor characters inserted much charm into the story, and even though they might have been on the one-dimensional side, the traits shown helped make the story interesting and kept it moving.

The detecting aspects of the story were good, and the ending was somewhat unexpected. The author does a good job leaving both clues and red herrings about, making it difficult to accurate determine the truth about the murders that have been occurring. While the ending felt a bit forced, it didn’t detract from the overall enjoyment of the book. Recommended reading. Four stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Severn House for an advance complimentary ebook of this title.

Body parts keep turning up in the Thames!

This novel is based on a series of actual murders which took place along the Thames between 1873 and 1889.

Set in the late 1800s enquiry agents Matthew Grand and James Batchelor share a house where they employ a Mrs Rackstraw as a housekeeper. This formidable woman caters for their every need while imposing her own will so forcefully that the gentlemen sometimes are unsure as to who is the employer and who the employee!

When they arrive home to find her in high dudgeon regarding a ‘lunatic’ who has been hanging around the house, they make the acquaintance of Mr Selwyn Byng, an unprepossessing character who entreats them to find his missing wife, Emilia, an heiress who has been kidnapped. The plot thickens!

At the same time, the Thames Police, led by the eccentric Inspector ‘Daddy’ Bliss, are fishing female body parts from the river at an alarming rate.

This very readable story canters away at a cracking pace and soon the bodies are mounting and Grand and Batchelor have any number of leads to follow. The suspense continues to build and the threads of both investigations become confusingly knotted.

The writing brings to life the social differences in London at the time and provides a good insight into social history, as well as a jolly good yarn.

Grand and Batchelor are great foils for each other, and their conversations contain more than a little humour.

Altogether a gripping read which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Pashtpaws

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

I didn’t realise this book was part of a series and think it would have been better to read the others first. The story is set in the 1870 s when a wife goes missing and bodies begin to turn up along the Thames. It is well written and intriguing but I felt the characterisation was weak (which is why I’m wondering if I should have read the other books first) and I didn’t really care what happened as such.
So for me this was good but not great, however I will be reading the authors other novels as I feel the premise deserves a second chance.

September, 1873 and private enquiry agents Matthew Grand and James Batchelor have been apprached by a distraught Selwyn Byng to find his kidnapped wife. Meanwhile lunatic William Bisgrove has escaped from Broadmoor looking for his lost love. Added to this the river police are finding parts of female bodies in the river Thames.
This is my first read of a book in the series, and it was a satisfying read but nothing more. The two main characters didn't really stand out as personalities enough for me.

Review of The Ring by M.J.Trow. Severn House, publishers
This fifth novel of the series opens with the prison escape of a lunatic named “Bisgrove” in late 19th century London.
The major characters of this series of mysteries are the London inquiry agents (private detectives), Matthew Grand, who came from Boston wealth, and James Batchelor from Great Britain. They are smart, unassuming and likable.
The primary plot of this historical mystery centers around the fact that Mr. Selwyn Byng’s wife, Emilia, and her maid, Molly, are missing. Emilia is a young, tea heiress, and her husband, Byng, also comes from wealth since his father owns a lumber importing business.
Byng has gotten kidnap letters with correct spelling of difficult words and strange spelling of easy ones, leading the detectives to believe that the kidnappers are educated. He also receives Emilia’s ring finger with the ring still attached.
Thames River policeman, George Crossland finds a torso of a woman with her arms, legs and head missing. She is identified as the maid, Molly. But Emilia is still missing, and no one can come up with the ransom money, because her inheritance cannot be touched for 13 more years, when she is 35 or upon her death, whichever comes first. The suspects are many including Byng’s father, Emilia’s brothers, the llunatic, Bisoff, or maybe some unknown person. Selwyn Byng, her husband, is heartbroken and distraught over the kidnapping.

The beginning is well written. The description sounds a little like Anne Perry’s Thomas Pitt novels, especially with the mention the River police. There is a colorful description of Thames river policeman Crossland, his wife and family, but generally there a lack of detail to describe and develop the other major characters in the novel. Also more description of place and time would add to the richness of the mystery. It is possible that the first novel in the series gives much more detail about the agents and some of the other recurring characters.
There were a few colorful personalities including Mrs. Rackstraw, the house keeper, Knowes, a likable villlain, who lives up to his name. He has the connections to find out pertinant information about anyone. There is also Grand’s maid, Maisie, who is infatuated with him..
The character, Bisgrove, seemed superfluous. Maybe he was added to the story so that he reader would include him in the list of suspects. I needed some closure on him. Maybe he will appear in the next novel of the series. Also I may have liked it this novel more if I had read the first book in the series.
One interesting quote from the mystery was from the character Bliss, the Thames police Constable. He said that there is “Nothing like slow stragulation to make the great British public think justice has been done.”
4/5

Thank you NetGalley and Severn House for the eARC.
In 1873 London, James Grand and Matthew Batchelor are hired by Selwyn Byng to find his wife who has been kidnapped. A note was delivered to him, with bad spelling, asking for 5,000 pounds or she will be killed.
At the same time, part of a body is discovered in the Thames, with different parts turning up subsequently.
The book was a fair read, it had a strong sense of place of London in the 1800's which was fun. The 2 private enquiry agents are charismatic and I got a kick out of their tempestuous housekeeper. Selwyn Byng is odious, juvenile and unreliable. All in all I enjoyed the story, it was well written and amusing.

London. 1873. It would be another fourteen years before a gentleman calling himself a Consulting Detective would make his first appearance in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, but Matthew Grand and James Batchelor are just that – people consult them, and they try to detect things. That is pretty much where any resemblance to the residents of 221B Baker Street ends. Neither Grand nor Batchelor is nice but dim, nor is either given to bashing out a melancholy bit of Mendelssohn on a Stradivarius. Matthew Grand, though, has seen military service; rather than battling the followers of Sher Ali Khan in Afghanistan, he has had the chastening experience of fighting his fellow Americans during the War Between The States a decade earlier. While James Batchelor is an impecunious former member of The Fourth Estate, his colleague comes from wealthy New Hampshire stock.
The River Thames plays a central part in The Ring. Although Joseph Bazalgette’s efforts to clean it up with his sewerage works were almost complete, the river was still a bubbling and noxious body of dirty brown effluent, not helped by the frequent appearance of human bodies bobbing along on its tides. In this case, however, we must say that the bodies come in instalments, as someone has been chopping them to bits. PC Crossland makes the first grisly discovery:
“… he knew exactly what the white thing was. It was the left side of what had once been a human being, sliced neatly at the hip and below the breast. There was no arm. No head. No legs.”
Trow gives us a Gilbertian cast of comedy coppers, in this case the River Police, led by the elephantine Inspector Bliss. While Bliss and his minions are trying to put together a case – and also the various limbs and organs of an unfortunate woman – Grand and Batchelor are visited by Selwyn Byng, an unseemly and ramshackle character, who believes his wife has been abducted, and has the ransom note to prove it. Byng may look cartoonish, and lack moral fibre; “Where’s your stiff upper lip?” “Underneath this loose flabby chin!” (quoted with due reverence to Tony Hancock and Kenneth Williams) but he has a bob or two, and so our detectives take on the search for the missing Emilia Byng.
It occurs to me that in dismissing any resemblance between H&W and G&B I am missing out one very important personage, and that is the housekeeper. The much revered Mrs Hudson is felt, rather than seen or heard, but Mrs Rackstraw is another matter entirely. The formidable woman dominates the apartment supposedly ruled over by the two young gentlemen:
“Mrs Rackstraw had been brought up in a God-fearing household and didn’t really hold with young gentlemen of their calibre not going to church. Had they been asked, both Grand and Batchelor would have preferred the constant nagging; her frozen silence and the way the boiled eggs bounced in their cups as she slammed them down on the table was infinitely worse.”
MJ Trow has been entertaining us for over thirty years with such series at the Inspector Lestrade novels and the adventures of the semi-autobiographical school master detective Peter Maxwell. Long-time readers will know that jokes are never far away, even when the pages are littered with sudden death, violence and a profusion of body parts. Grand and Batchelor eventually solve the mystery of what happened to Emilia Byng, both helped and hindered by the ponderous ‘Daddy’ Bliss and a random lunatic, recently escaped from Broadmoor. Trow writes with panache and a love of language equalled by few other British writers. His grasp of history is unrivalled, but he wears his learning lightly. The Ring is a bona fide crime mystery, but the gags are what lifts the narrative from the ordinary to the sublime:
“They adjusted their chairs and faced the wall. Mr and Mrs Gladstone stared back at them from their sepia photographs, jaws of granite and eyes of steel. Since he was the famous politician and she was merely loaded and fond of ice-cold baths, he sat in the chair and she stood at his shoulder, restraining him, if the rumours were true, from hurtling out of Number Ten in search of fallen women.”

We always buy M.J. Trow's Grand and Batchelor series for our library. Trow writes compelling and intriguing mysteries.

Matthew Grand and James Batchelor, the one a worldly-wise ex-soldier, and the other, a naive former journalist, make for an interesting pair of private investigators.

Unfortunately this fifth instalment in M.J. Trow's Victorian Mystery series pitches them into familiar territory for readers of historical mysteries based in 19th century London. A missing wife (and her maid), a distraught husband, assorted eccentric and vaguely Dickensian characters, and bodies found floating in the murky Thames, are staple fare and there really is not much to distinguish this somewhat mundane story from a host of others.

Usually the wit and erudition of the author are enough to see me through, but there is little enough of them in evidence here. Even the "twist" in the solution brought little to surprise.

I was disappointed, having greatly enjoyed Grand and Batchelor in their previous investigations.