Murder on Platform Four is the fifth Tate & Bell historical mystery by Irina Shapiro. Released 30th July 2025, it's 324 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free. The other books in the series are also available on KU.
This is a well written Victorian mystery series featuring an intelligent and driven female protagonist who's a nurse. She's practical, strong, honest, and intelligent, her partner in investigation is an inspector at Scotland Yard. Both have quite tragic back stories. The prose flows very well, and although it's often melancholy, the author does a very good job of being historically accurate (classism, racism, drug abuse, misogyny, murder, prejudice, and corruption) without being completely unrelentingly depressing.
The clues are fair-play, and the denouement and resolution are shocking, but fair. It should be noted that this is emphatically *not* a cozy read. It is dark and quite often explicitly violent.
Four stars, with the emphatic understanding that it's not an easy light entertaining read. Fans of Andrea Penrose and C.S. Harris will likely find this series worthwhile.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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