Florence Nightingale (already pretty cool) is called to her dear friends Sidney and Elizabeth Herbert's household, just to discover someone has taken deadly action against them. Fortunately for Elizabeth and her father, General a Court, they were spared. Unfortunately, the Herbert driver and servant was not. Sidney has asked, against the General's advice, Florence to conduct a discreet investigation. Florence agrees. As if she doesn't have enough to deal with, King Cholera has also decided to pay a visit to the streets of London, Soho more specifically. Now Florence must maintain her own nursing Establishment, investigate a fatal shooting, and devise a way to combatant King Cholera on behalf of the residents of Soho. All this before a murderer makes another attempt.
First thing first, I did like reading this novel. I enjoyed the friendship between Florence, the Herberts, and Mary a.k.a. Goose. My favorite part about Florence was her mind. There is a comment made by Mary about not being able to remove Florence from Henry Whitehead's study because of charts. But I felt this gave the reader the window into Florence. She was genuinely interested in healing, and found joy in researching the various paths. However, I was expecting just a bit more. I wanted to "get to know" Florence. Not just about her passion for healing, but her other desires, fears, and her past. There are veiled illusions to something, but nothing in depth.
Second thing is the plot itself. The description is why I wanted to read the novel. Florence Nightingale solving crime? Who could pass that up? But in the end, it fell kind of flat. There is one scene in particular that has no bearing on the rest of the novel until particularly the end. As I was reading, I kept thinking, why is this necessary? And while a good mystery writer keeps the identity of the murderer a secret, this one felt like a leap. I mean, once the explanation was given, it made sense. But there wasn't really a build up to it.
I should also preface all this opinions by also saying that this is the second novel in this series. I clearly didn't read the first one, but I think I will go back and see if maybe Florence's character is more developed there. Maybe the author had built her up so much in the first one, that she wanted to focus on the crime in this one? I'm not sure. But, as someone who is reading this for the first time, I feel comfortable rating this novel 3 even 3.5 stars out of 5.
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