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.