Four Thousand Days

Four Thousand Days is the first Margaret Murray mystery by M J Trow. Released 1st Feb 2022 by Severn House, it's 224 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 skillfully written and well researched historical mystery set in late Victorian England. The mystery is very well constructed and engineered. I generally have a good idea by midway through a mystery who did what and to whom (and why) and this one managed to surprise me on several levels. The author does a great job interweaving an engaging mystery around real historical events and characters and it's so skillfully rendered that I wasn't always sure where verifiable fact veered off into fiction.

There's a subtle warm humor and intellectual vibe here. I adore mysteries with sleuths who are academics and this is a promising start to a new series. Although it's not at all derivative, it reminds me in a lot of good ways of PD James' Dalgleish, and Amanda Cross' (Dr. Carolyn Heilbrun's) Kate Fansler novels. Fans of mysteries in academia will find a lot to enjoy here. There's also a very slight hint of Miss Marple, although Dr. Murray's not fluffy or harmless in the slightest, she is unflappable and wise to the ways of the world.

Four and a half stars. My (very slight) ding comes from the fact that the secondary characters are legion and so lightly sketched in that I had trouble keeping them straight in my own mind. I look forward eagerly to reading more in this series and from this author. 

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.