‘The Path of the Wicked’ by Caro Peacock

Published by Crème de la Crime,
2013.
ISBN: 978-1-78029-041-6

In July 1840 Private Investigator Liberty Lane is hired by a local magistrate to go to Cheltenham to look at evidence in a murder case.  The man accused is known as a political agitator, but the question is whether he murdered governess Mary Marsh. Jack Picton, the man accused, refuses to say where he was on the night of the murder.

Liberty Lane is an experienced investigator but the pieces of information that she manages to uncover are disparate and puzzling.   This is a well plotted book with the reader accompanying Liberty in her search for truth and enjoying the process as she discovers evidence and theorises from that evidence.  The setting of mid nineteenth century Cheltenham is beautifully delineated and the lives of people of all sorts in that era are lovingly recreated by Caro. The hardships of the poor and the unhappy reception of their efforts to gain reform are particularly well shown as are the logistics of travel between London and Cheltenham and in the environs of Cheltenham.  The characters, major and minor, come off the page as real people experiencing the travails of their day.

This is the sixth adventure for Liberty Lane, but a new reader would find this a complete story needing no prior knowledge of Liberty’s past.
-----
Reviewer: Jennifer S Palmer

Caro Peacock has another identity. As Gillian Linscott she is the author of the award-winning series about the suffragette detective Nell Bray.  There are eleven books in the series. Caro lives near the Welsh Borders. These Liberty Lane stories began with Death at Dawn, (in the USA A Foreign Affair) followed by five more books.