Dance with Death is the 12th Barker & Llewelyn Victorian historical mystery by Will Thomas. Released 13th April 2021 by Macmillan on their Minotaur imprint, it's 320 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is a well established series and the characters are quite finely drawn in a well written whole. The background research is impressive and the descriptions really do call up Victorian London. The story is fictionalized but written around a real historical framework and intertwined so skillfully that it's not always easy to tell where real history shades over into fiction.
The denouement and resolution are well done and satisfying. My only quibble (and it's a fairly minor one) is that the dialogue feels anachronistic in some places. It isn't clunky or awkward, but there is some modern vernacular.
The books are self contained stand-alones, so it's not necessary to have read the books in order to understand what's going on.
High quality historical mystery. Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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