With thanks to Netgalley, the author and Severn House publishing for the arc.
Description
"When Inspector Field shows his friend Charles Dickens the body of a young woman dragged from the River Thames, he cannot have foreseen that the famous author would immediately recognize the victim as Isabella Gordon, a housemaid he had tried to help through his charity. Nor that Dickens and his fellow writer Wilkie Collins would determine to find out who killed her."

Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins team up to solve the murder of Isobella Gordon who had lived for a short time in the Urania Cottage project supported by Dickens. Urania Cottage was a real project for homeless and destitute women in London and was indeed supported by Dickens. Dickens and Wilkie Collins were also real life friends at the time of the story. The two amateur sleuths are assisted (or distracted) in their hunt for the killer by Isobella's friend Sesina. The read is an engaging one and the author portrays the characters well enough for them and the situations they encounter to be believable. I did find it a little slow going at times hence the 4 instead of 5 stars. I would not hesitate to read other books in the series to find out how the chacters and their relationships to each other develop.

Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens team up to solve a mystery in Cora Harrison's "Season of Darkness: A Gaslight Mystery." And it works.
The mystery is a good one: Isabella refuses to tell Sesina, both dropouts from Dickens' home for wayward girls, whom she is going to collect blackmail money from. When Isabella's body washes up in the Thames, Dickens recognizes her and asks Collins to help him find her murderer.
The choice of characters may send the reader to the nearest search engine. Dickens and Collins were good friends, you discover. Dickens was a rock star in London and Collins went on to write "The Moonstone," often called the first detective novel. Urania Cottage was a charitable project conceived by Dickens, and Isabella and Sesina were real dropouts.
Cora Harrison is author of the Burren novels, starring a woman judge in 16th Century Ireland, and the Reverend Mother mysteries, in which a Catholic religious solves mysteries in early 20th Century Cork with a Jewish doctor and a former student.
Count on Harrison to come up with one novel idea after another. Count on this new Gaslight series to be another winner.