Marilyn's Mystery Reads

It’s London, 1854, and the continent is in the midst of the Crimean War. Britain has joined the alliance of France and the Ottoman Empire against the Russian Empire, but Ben Canaan, son of a poor Jewish tailor in the city’s East End, is too busy having a good time to think much about it.  His family loves him, but they are aghast and embarrassed by his behavior and his non-observance of his religion’s laws.

Then an incredible opportunity changes Ben’s life.  He and his father are asked to make a suit for Viscount Palmerston, Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, and after Mr. Canaan measures the viscount they are loaned one of his jackets to use as a model for the new suit.  When Ben and his father return home, Ben brings the jacket down to their workroom (the basement) and feeling something stiff in one of the pockets, he takes an envelope out of it.  The temptation is too great to resist, so Ben carefully opens the envelope.  He was obviously given this jacket in error.

The photo inside the envelope takes Ben’s breath away.  It’s a daguerrotype of a beautiful woman smiling at the camera, and it’s dated JUNE 1854.  He rushes to his attic room and removes a tin box from under a floorboard.  There he compares the daguerrotype he took from Palmerston’s jacket to one that’s been hidden in the box.  It’s the same woman without question, and the caption beneath the image reads Elizabeth.

Ben thinks back to their meeting three years earlier.  Elizabeth de Varney had approached him, and before long a passionate love affair began.  But one morning Ben awoke to find himself alone; Elizabeth had left without a word or a note of explanation.  Six months later he received a letter from a man claiming to be Elizabeth’s father saying that he understood that his daughter and Ben had been together and that he regretted to inform Ben that Elizabeth had passed away from smallpox.

But that letter was dated March 1852, two years earlier than the daguerrotype from Palmerston’s jacket.  Even stranger, there’s a note on the back of the more recent daguerrotype from someone named Heathcote.  It reads “The White Death–more to come–trust no one.”

That is the beginning of Ben’s search for Elizabeth that will take him over the water on a British steamship headed to Constantinople.  He’ll contend with seasickness and barely edible food on the HMS Midas, mysterious deaths when he gets to the Turkish capital, and police who don’t believe his reason for being in Constantinople.  The more he looks into Elizabeth’s life and alleged death, the greater the danger he finds himself in.

Murder in Constantinople is a fascinating read with its mix of history, mystery, and religion.  Ben Canaan is a terrific character, and I am looking forward to the second book in the series that will be published later this year.

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Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.