‘The Terror of Tannery Lane’ by M.R.C. Kasasian

Published by Canelo,
19 March 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-80436906-7 (PB)

The Terror of Tannery Lane is the third novel in this author’s series featuring the diminutive Lady Violet Thorn, daughter of Lord Thetbury and author of penny dreadfuls set in Victorian Suffolk. I read, reviewed and enjoyed its predecessor The Montford Maniac. I have not yet read The Horror of Haglin House, the first of the series. 

At the very start a man is assumed to have drowned in floods caused by torrential rain, despite the best attempts of Lady Violet to save him. What this has to do with later events only becomes clear well through the story. Shenanigans during the visit to the town of the Prince of Wales, celebrating Queen Victoria’s jubilee a mere 17 months late, lead Lady Violet to visit a nursing home where she overhears a disagreement between a patient and her visitors. She befriends Cherry Bight, the young lady patient, who claims that her parents are missing (she presumes they have been murdered) and their home, Maccabee House, sold under duress to her visitors, the Brutons. Matters quickly descend into relative chaos. A mannequin with a knife sticking out of it appears in Lady Violet’s house, body parts are discovered and the Brutons disappear. The search for Cherry Bight’s parents goes on. 

As in its predecessor, Lady Violet is aided in her investigations by some eccentric characters. Her two retainers, the faithful manservant Gerrund and the outspoken maid Agnust, remain idiosyncratic. The hansom driver Faithless and his horse Old Queeny continue to potter about. Inspector Alfred Stanbury of the local police is by comparison relatively normal. We learnt in The Montford Maniac that Lady Violet had been jilted by her fiancé, but she now appears to be going sweet on Anthony Appleton, a dapper thespian who appears to specialise in joining rather hopeless touring companies (‘I cannot recall a production in which the prompt has been so frequently employed,’ he quoted ruefully from the Crimplesham Clarion. ‘Mr Anthony Appleton appeared to be the sole member of the company who had taken the trouble to learn his lines.’) Some of the dialogue is in what one assumes to be a Suffolk dialect, and one or two of the locals are given to strange expressions and/or mangling well-known sayings (‘One nod is as good as another to a deaf goat’ Agnust announces at one point). 

Again, as in its predecessor, leading characters from Lady Violet’s own novels continually pop up in her head to give advice and comment on her actions or those of others involved in the story. Prominent are Ruby Gibson, her lady adventuress, and Inspector Havelock Hefty of Scotland Yard. ‘For too long I had sought solace in the company of my characters but even they brought me no comfort now,’ Lady Violet says at one point. She continues to enjoy absinthe and the elaborate ritual it requires. 

Voodoo, sewage, drowning, tanning hides, misidentifications and a lunatic asylum are some of the subjects covered, and considerable violence and savagery occur (particularly towards the end) in a novel whose general flavour is nonetheless light-hearted and comic. For once I had my suspicions about one character early on (I’m not usually a forensic reader) and was proved right, not that I foresaw the closing circumstances at all. The novel joins The Montford Maniac in being a very entertaining and well-plotted novel which can be recommended with enthusiasm to those who like a bit (in truth, quite a lot) of fun.
------
Reviewer: David Whittle 

M. R. C. Kasasian  was raised in Lancashire, and has had careers as varied as factory hand, wine waiter, veterinary assistant, fairground worker and  dentist. He lives with his wife in Suffolk in the winter and in a fishing village in the south of Malta during the summer. He is now a full time author. 

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently then.