CAESAR NOW BE STILL

Sherlock Holmes’ mentee investigates brutal murders in 1890s New York City in Schildiner’s historical mystery.

In this novel’s opening pages, Sgt. Wilson Hargreave of the New York City Police Department acknowledges learning “some skills from the world’s greatest detective,” and later credits him as a “mentor.” But Hargreave is more rugged and weathered than Holmes, with a past life of crime as part of a gang in Paris and scars on his face and neck. Also, unlike the Holmes stories, Schildiner’s novel is presented in the first person from Hargreave’s perspective as he’s initially approached by a citizen with a problem. Mrs. Stoker-Greene, a well-to-do woman, reports the disappearance of her former maid, Florence Murphy. The missing woman is soon discovered dead—gruesomely slain in the manner of several other women—and Hargreave begins investigating the crimes of someone who seems to be New York City’s equivalent of Jack the Ripper. Along the way, Schildiner builds out the world of turn-of-the-20th-century Manhattan. Although it’s set a few decades later than Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film Gangs of New York, it similarly portrays a city with simmering tensions between different immigrant groups. Hargreave, who’s French and English and called “Frenchy” by the rival Irish and Russian gangs, is rarely far from a brawl at any given moment. Schildiner also takes time to explore Hargreave’s background and highlight the class differences between him and the upper-crust Stoker-Greene, who wants to join in his investigation: “The wealthy see the police as a form of sanitation employee—necessary for cleaning up the unpleasant aspects of life, but otherwise servants meant to be kept from sight,” Hargreave narrates. While the story never stalls, the cast continues to grow as the cop digs deeper; as a result, some secondary players feel underdeveloped. There’s a fair amount of fighting between moments of deduction, though, with Hargreave showing off his expert knife skills in a series of skirmishes. The novel hints at the possibility of a continuing series, and some readers will eagerly await the next installment.

A clever, engaging spin on Victorian-era crime stories.