THE NAMING OF THE BIRDS

Two policemen and a newspaper writer return to untangle the cause of a series of grisly murders in late 19th-century London.

Inspector Henry Cutter and Sgt. Gideon Bliss of London’s Metropolitan Police once again join forces with Miss Octavia Hillingdon, researcher and extremely independent-minded woman. A series of retired but once powerful men are being tortured and murdered across London. Messages are left in blood, and the bones of children are left as tokens. But what links the men together and why are they being eliminated? While Cutter and Gideon seek to solve the murders, murky clues continue to emerge about who is behind the spree and the events more than 20 years earlier that might be their cause. The gothic horror of O’Donnell’s first volume that introduced the three is teased at but ultimately left unresolved in this installation. Beautifully written, the book has an extremely promising start, lush with detail and imbued horror, but the ending feels rushed—leaning heavily on dialogue to wrap up the story quickly—and perhaps incomplete as the setting for what one assumes is the next volume is laid.

A rich, chaotic tapestry of a story that is impossible to put down.