Brenna B. (demiducky25) reviewed Murder on Lexington Avenue (Gaslight, Bk 12) on + 161 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
This is the 12th book in Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Mysteries series. In this book, we find that Frank Malloy has been called to investigate the murder of a wealthy businessman, Mr. Wooten. Because Frank's son is deaf and the man who was murdered had a deaf daughter, it was felt that Frank would be the best one to handle the case. When he goes to question the widow of the victim, she ends up going into labor, although no one knew she was pregnant because she was a larger woman and was able to hide it from the rest of the household. She refuses to send for the family doctor, so Frank has no choice but to send for midwife Sarah Brandt. Once the widow gives birth, Sarah is asked to stay on to help for a while and she is in a position where she is able to help Frank with his investigation. There is no shortage of suspects in this case as it seems many people would benefit from having Mr. Wooten dead. Wooten felt that speech-reading was the only way to benefit the deaf, so he was fighting to have schools that taught signing shut down (including the school Frank's son, Brain, goes to). Meanwhile, Wooten's daughter, Electra, had secretly been learning to sign from a teacher from Brian's school, who just might be her lover. Wooten's son Leander was constantly earning the anger of his father, but would do anything to help Electra. Rounding out the cast of suspects are Wooten's business partner and his son, both who had motives to kill Wooten. With so many motives and suspects, how will Frank and Sarah ever sort out who the killer actually was?!
I enjoyed the Wooten family and their various connections (friends, lovers, business partners, etc) in this book. I felt they were an interesting family to investigate. I've heard about Alexander Graham Bell's theories on teaching the deaf and his belief in eugenics, so it was interesting to see how it was presented here (we typically just think of him as the inventor of the telephone, not someone who felt that selective breeding should be used with people). Very little time is spent on Frank and Sarah's personal lives outside of the investigation, with the exception of a bit of a set up to possibly revealing what happened to Catherine, Sarah's adopted daughter, before Sarah met her. There also isn't much on the Frank/ Sarah budding romance front, so don't get your hopes up, though their friendship has warmed up a bit in the sense that Frank isn't as afraid to call Sarah for help and willingly discusses the case with her, rather than hiding details from her. Perhaps by making her more of his confidant, we will eventually see something more than just the banter that we all enjoy?
I enjoyed the Wooten family and their various connections (friends, lovers, business partners, etc) in this book. I felt they were an interesting family to investigate. I've heard about Alexander Graham Bell's theories on teaching the deaf and his belief in eugenics, so it was interesting to see how it was presented here (we typically just think of him as the inventor of the telephone, not someone who felt that selective breeding should be used with people). Very little time is spent on Frank and Sarah's personal lives outside of the investigation, with the exception of a bit of a set up to possibly revealing what happened to Catherine, Sarah's adopted daughter, before Sarah met her. There also isn't much on the Frank/ Sarah budding romance front, so don't get your hopes up, though their friendship has warmed up a bit in the sense that Frank isn't as afraid to call Sarah for help and willingly discusses the case with her, rather than hiding details from her. Perhaps by making her more of his confidant, we will eventually see something more than just the banter that we all enjoy?
