By Miriam R. Kramer

How to describe the highly talented author Paraic O’Donnell’s complex mysteries starring an energetic detective, his sergeant, and a then-termed “lady journalist” with tenacity to spare? In the novels The House on Vesper Sands and follow-up The Naming of The Birds, O’Donnell weaves his memorable characters together with occasional supernatural touches and a need for substantial resolutions. He has a Dickensian gift for creating a brutal and sometimes poignant atmosphere in lower-class settings, along with a moral weight to the relationships he sees between the powerful and the powerless. As his investigators put together their puzzle pieces, they endear themselves to us while evoking echoes of other classic British mysteries.

The aptly named Inspector Cutter uses his sardonic and sharp-tongued sense on the people around him, adding humor that leavens tensions throughout the novels. With a blistering stride he leads his team towards justice down ethereal paths through an 1890s London fog. Secretive, he barks at his underling, the hapless, gentle Sergeant Bliss, to teach the former divinity student turned police sergeant how to write down the facts and observe them from another angle. Their acquaintance, the lively journalist and faux socialite Octavia Hillingdon, assists them by uncovering secrets with the tenacity of a dachshund disappearing down a badger hole.

In The House on Vesper Sands, lower-class young women who possess an uncanny brightness of soul have begun to disappear. The supernatural element, involving the “Spiriters” and the energy they harvest, comes into focus gradually, giving the story a shimmering, otherworldly quality without sacrificing emotional realism. O’Donnell seeds his clues throughout the story with care, entwining the sergeant’s search for a missing female friend, Octavia’s investigation of worthy targets, and Cutter’s dogged and energetic pursuit of the truth.

As they come together to follow a narrowing trail, the novel moves from urban intrigue to a remote and eerie coastal estate. This plot is thick with gothic imagery: decaying mansions, secret rituals, and the social power shielding monstrous crimes.

In The Naming of the Birds, the trio find out that when an orphanage burned, killing the occupants, twelve children disappeared completely off the rolls of the dead. In the first, flashback chapter, the orphans are taken to a locked building by certain school patrons, called only by the names of birds, and forced to complete tasks to satisfaction or suffer fatal consequences.

Years later, Cutter, Bliss, and Hillingdon investigate a string of meticulously staged murders targeting powerful retired officials with ties to the orphanage. A mysterious assassin leaves cryptic clues tied to this long-buried scandal. The investigation gradually reveals the history of abuse and cover-ups. Again, the powerful in finance and government are able to do what they like, until they find themselves the ultimate target for someone with an implacable need for vengeance.

The second novel drags a bit in the middle when Inspector Cutter again stays secretive while slowly teaching Sergeant Bliss to better interpret the concrete facts of the case. After the assassin finally appears, the novel picks up momentum, with a twist that bares Inspector Cutter’s judgment open to his own conscience. O’Donnell more than makes up for the pause in pace with beautifully depicted scenes that cause us to stop and relish his words. These novels are more literary fiction than beach-book bestsellers, and the writing is much more satisfying.

The House on Vesper Sands and The Naming of the Birds each draw on classic traditions: Victorian mystery, Gothic suspense, Wilkie-Collins style intrigue, and Agatha Christie’s classic, uncanny countryside tales.  As with Christie, these novels reveal an acute awareness of good and evil, with the occasional sense that the ends justify the means.

Yet O’Donnell’s language and literary style are vehicles peculiar to him, conveying a subtly contemporary outlook on the mores and outrages of this late Victorian period. His writing is often exquisite and detached, and always precise. For those who love a gothic touch, British humor, and a British mystery, you can do far worse than pick up this duology.

About the Author: Miriam Kramer worked at Olsson’s Books & Records before it closed in 2008, welcoming Old Town, Alexandria, residents to a unique place where employees with encyclopedic knowledge of literature and music enriched the community. As a global nomad, she has lived, studied, or worked in diverse countries overseas. With her experience writing and studying international affairs, she has promoted democracy, international media, the arts, peace building, and citizen diplomacy during her career.